Little Black Box
by Lunar Chasmodai
Summary: .AU. The relaxing school trip atmosphere kind of died after the plane went down. Just how long can a group of angry, emotionally unprepared teenagers survive before they kill themselves…or each other? .SasuNaru.ShikaTema.GaaraNeji.Other.
1. Mood: General Annoyance

**o.O I make no statement (except for warnings).**

**-Alternate Universe (because all Shinobi have a 747 ::eye roll::)**

**-Homosexuality (SasuNaru, among others)**

**-Heterosexuality (ShikaTema and HinaKiba, among others)**

**-Probably mentions of abuse (Mostly Sasuke-related)**

**-Angst**

**-Humor**

**-An original character (she dies early on though, for my own twisted pleasure, in a non-heroic way).**

**-Exploitation of manga characters this writer has no claim too. She is stealing. Hit her (or not).**

* * *

Mozart. 

Mozart.

Calming, calming Mozart.

Not so calming shouting of blond child, angry speech of chaperone. 'School trips are the devil, stuck on such a small plane. The disruptive twerps.' Another high note. So calming. Skip next song, cello, cello, sad cello…

Sasuke opened one eye. Two seats over, he could hear his classmate whining about something. "Shut up!" he heard someone bark before he had a chance to. He shut his eyes. Probably Haruno Sakura. 'This is unpleasant on so many levels…' he thought miserably.

Well, it was either this or spending spring break with Orochimaru. Very little sounded as miserable as that, even if it meant being in a majorly crowded 747, trying not to strangle the person next to him. Or the person two seats over, since the person next to him was fast asleep and completely normalized.

"Shut up!" A rather obnoxious voice shouted over the din. "Jesus, Uzumaki, stop running that mouth for half a second, okay?" If the speaker, one Inuzuka Kiba, hadn't been best friends with the blond loud-mouth, it would have almost sounded threatening.

Unfortunately, they were best friends, which meant more din as the two argued. Sasuke turned up his music so loud he swore he could feel the piano all the way down in his toes. It tickled. Sasuke hated it when stuff tickled. It was like pain, but not enough to hurt, but enough to--

'Okay, when I start exploring the psychology of pain, it's time to listen to a different song.'

There was a huff. "Okay," came a loud voice. The plane went silent. Sasuke could actually hear the music. Miracle of miracles. He turned it off though, because the person talking was one of the chaperones. A tall, pretty blond girl with a commanding stance and dangerous eyes, there was no ignoring her.

Sasuke took off the head phones.

"Excuse me, Konoha High School." Everyone who wasn't a part of Konoha High School looked away and went on working on their various projects. "Konoha High School, please remember to be kind and courteous to all of those around you."

"Are you stoned?" someone shouted.

"Unfortunately not. The vodka is in the hold and I left the hard drugs under my mattress." No one seemed to deeply care about the legalities. Besides, she couldn't be serious, could she? Sasuke was pretty sure she was only eighteen, nineteen tops. She was a senior, after all.

"As such, we'll be landing soon-ish. Yes. No. Maybe. Just sit tight, we'll get off the Good Shit Lollypop soon enough." She smiled with faux pleasantness. "Translation: sit down, shut up, I won't pull out my Kung Fu on your ass. Seriously. Do not tempt me, I will do it."

For some reason, the plane went quiet.

"Tema, you're being scary again."

Sasuke recognized Inuzuka Kiba's voice.

"I'm sure I am," the girl hissed. Sasuke recalled her name to be Temari, and that she was the elder sister of Sabaku Gaara. Gaara wasn't a bad guy, actually. Quiet. Sasuke liked quiet. Well, perhaps not so much liked, but at the very least tolerated. There was something to be said for that.

Temari sat down again, up at the front of the plane. It was very quiet for a few minutes. Sasuke turned his music up a little because he wanted to hear it and he hadn't been able to. From near him he could hear the noise swelling so he turned up his iPod just a little higher to try and block out whatever was left.

It was peaceful. The stewardess, who kept offering Sasuke drinks and exposing her cleavage to the cool plane air, had finally run off to pester someone else and the various chatter had _actually ceased for a second._

"We're hitting a bit of turbulence," a voice boomed from nowhere and everywhere at once. This was disconcerting, especially since it, no doubt, interrupted the music Sasuke was listening to. He winced. 'Will I never actually get a second of peace?'

School trips? Just say no. They're all an excuse to try and teach children character building skills. No matter what they say, they're not going to allow for any piece of the budget to go to a Hawaii trip without some sort of educational compensation. And by educational compensation, they mean legal torture.

Sasuke was apparently the only person to notice this.

Well, Sasuke and Temari, but that's only because she'd been in the system for almost twelve years. At the end of the year, this particular brand of torture ended and she was off to college where you don't actually have to be at class ever. If they want to call walking through the cemetery an educational experience, they can.

Ekphrastic poetry is a great art, really. Not that anyone was really sure what it was.

Of course, there's a special college-specific brand of torture commonly known as 'tuition fees', but those are far too horrendous to be spoken of so lightly. Best be left for those who must deal with them and let the ignorant remain ignorant. Sound familiar? Didn't think so.

Sasuke shut his eyes. 'Too many thoughts,' he murmured. 'Need to shut up.' He tuned out the background noise, sound by sound, until it was just him and the classical tunes that wafted out of his white earbuds. It was peaceful, he decided.

At least, until another bout of turbulence hit the plane.

There was some swearing from the other side of the plane. "Damn it," shouted the voice, over Sasuke's music. The dark haired boy gave up and dropped his iPod into his carry-on bag. No use wasting the battery.

"I spilled my juice. Look what you made me do Naruto." Haruno Sakura's voice, the passive aggressive little wench.

Not that Sasuke really disliked her all that much, except when she had taken to harassing him. She was getting better about that though. Over the past few months, she had dropped more into the 'good friend' category and out of the 'insane stalker category'.

"Please remain calm," Temari again. "It's just ginger ale Sakura. You'll live. We can wash it when we get to the hotel. On Hawaii. Where it's all…pleasant…" Her voice began to fade off.

Another bout of turbulence hit the plane full force. Storm clouds?

"Would everyone please put on their seat belt," this was the pilot's voice. Sasuke knew it well, since he seemed to have some sort of perchant for endless speaking. "There's only a minor detail with the fuel, please remain calm."

Whatever hit next was not calm. There was a sudden, disgusting lurch and it seemed like the plane had turned itself upside down, threatening to spill its contents all over itself. Sasuke felt his heart begin to beat a bit faster.

'Mayday-mayday-mayday…' It was just his mind, right? He was always like this, always so paranoid. Sasuke shut his eyes and sucked in his breath. His heart was racing, pumping the adrenaline through his veins and into his head, into his brain and crushing his mind. '_Calm down,_' he told himself, _'calm down._' As if that did any good, really, no matter what the yoga video had said.

"We have to prepare emergency landing procedures. The instructions are on the bottom of your card. Please follow them at this time."

Or not.

Temari stood up. "You heard the man! Up with your sorry asses!"

"I don't want to die like this!"

"You think I do?" The one Sasuke recognized as Temari's brother snapped. "Jesus, a plane crash. Puts Cobain to shame."

"Kankuro," Temari snapped, "the only way you're going out like Cobain is if you don't get the hell up and start doing what I say right now. Homicide? It's just three letters off from 'suicide'."

* * *

**Off to a bit of a slow start, but it will improve. Really.**

**To be continued?**

**I'll honestly only ask once: if you read this far and you liked it, please review. It would mean a lot to me. Want to make sure I haven't randomly developed suck over the past few months.**

**And yes, that probably is a Kurt-Cobain-was-murdered-conspiracy-theory-jibe.**

**Ignore.**


	2. Mood: Total Panic

**The reviews...oh the reviews...so many nice ones. My ego is now giving Alaska a run for its money as the largest state.**

**K. Masashi**** didn't like like my 'sharing' idea, so instead of claiming ownership, I merely 'borrow' the characters like a good Earth-fearing hippie and use them for my own sadistic tendencies. **

* * *

"Okay, who has Janice Joplin on their iPod?" 

There was silence.

"Fuck, what is wrong with the youth today?"

Silence.

"Hendrix?"

Still silence. In this case, silence was good. The pilot had managed to coax the plane into flying around in circles, giving them time to get their act together. Temari had managed to make the plane a little less frantic. It involved a fine blend of threats, bribes, and calming words. "Nirvana?" Someone raised their hand. Temari pulled a plastic bag out of her backpack. "In here. Keep it above water at all times. In fact, if anyone has anything classical, that would make everything really, really easy."

Sasuke chucked his iPod at Temari's face.

"You, passive aggressive little boy, I hereby place you in charge of…of…" she broke off. "Food. Yes. You put the food inside the air mask baggies." She pointed at the air mask bags that had fallen from the plane ceiling. "Anything that might keep us alive. Nuts, bread, anything else." There were so many people…no way whatever Sasuke assembled would keep them from starvation for very long.

She glanced around the plane. They were roughly two thousand feet above the water now, and going down fast. Once it hit the water, the plane might stay afloat a minute or two.  
"Can anyone not swim?"

Two hands shot up in the back. A few of the people turned to look. Hyuuga Hinata and Gaara had both their hands raised over their heads. Hinata was shaking, her fingers quivering with fear; Gaara, on the other hand, stared impassively forward.

Sasuke didn't bother. It was less 'I want to die', and more like 'why the hell should I try anyway?'

"Only you two?" Temari looked around the plane. It lurched. No more than fifteen hundred feet now. "Anyone else who does not come forward with their inability to swim will, undoubtedly, die. Please step forward." She rolled her eyes. "It's not your fault if you can't swim, but it will be your fault if you're an idiot and don't tell anyone."  
Sasuke didn't move.

"Okay, that's it then. Passive-aggressive one, do you have food?" On cue, Sasuke held up a few of the oxygen masks filled with various food rations he had found. Those mashed potatoes you get on airplanes?

The come in little packages that look like condoms.

"Good boy. Alright, if you can't swim, your seats are floatation devices. Remember that. Use those to the best of your ability. Carry-on bags, anyone? Does anyone have what you might use for supplies of any form? Because we're in the middle of fucking nowhere."

Ino raised her hand. "I have floral wire. My parents asked me to grab a flower from a family friend while we were down in Hawaii."

"Okay. You, ditch anything that isn't imperative to survival." The water was rising rapidly from beneath them. "Shit…you guys are going to have to swim upwards, okay?" A thousand feet tops? Sasuke stared impassively forward.

There was a shrieking noise from the back of the plane. "Oh no we're going to die!" Stewardess.

Temari rolled her eyes. "You pick now to freak out? Look, everyone, if you do what she did, you will die. If you remain calm, you won't. People, if it will be useful, grab it. If it's not, don't. If you can't swim with it, than you will die. Does anyone have like, fruit of any form?" No one raised their hand. "Sasuke, man bitch, put cans of juice in the baggies and attach them to seats. Hell, anything that floats."

No one moved.

"God! Move! We have maybe, three minutes before this entire plane goes under."

Chaos ensued. People bumped Sasuke from all sides, scrambling to do as Temari had instructed. In times of crisis, people are surprisingly easy to control. 'But I already knew that,' Sasuke thought blandly. 'Anything that floats…'

Seat cushions were the obvious choice. The second would have been blown up air mask bags, but those were used up. He had never had to make anything float before. Did the peanut packages float?

Did it matter? Water had begun to slowly leak into the plane. Sasuke felt a sudden fear leak into his throat. Water…there was water fucking everywhere.

He didn't want to die. Honestly, he didn't want to die. For a long time he had thought that death would be a welcome change because life was nothing, but now when it was staring him in the face, it seemed cold and unwelcoming. The water had begun to fizz around his ankles and his breath began to choke in his throat. Fear…this is what fear tastes like…

"I have to take my clothes!"

"My mother's watch is in there--"

"Shut up!" Temari shrieked. "Imminent death! Clothes do no good for a corpse. You think I want to leave the vodka? No! I do not! But I am not going to put myself at risk over that." Not much further. Temari flung herself at the wall, wrenching open the emergency exit. "Look, jump as soon as you can. Go." People near the doors began flinging themselves at the open air. There was a rolling, screaming lurch as the plane belly-flopped into the water, the shrieks of people still inside and of those left in the water.

"Everyone to the emergency exits. Get to the surface and try not to die, okay?

The water flooded in in torrents. It slammed Sasuke against the side of the plane, choking him and rendering him immobile.

Fuck.

That was about it. '_I don't want to die_,' he thought frantically, struggling against the water. Behind him, he could see red that was probably blood and tangles of limbs and gurgling cries as air escaped from lungs. '_I'm going to die_.'

Only, he didn't. Arms circled around his waist, yanking him away from the wall and lurched forward as hands grasped various hand holds and moving forward, forward. Sasuke slammed his eyes shut, mouth gaping as he struggled for air.

His eyes didn't open until his mouth found air above him. He flailed a little but that didn't seem to help. 'I'm going to die…' It didn't help that he lacked swimming skills. He was too mature to flail. Flailing would do nothing. In the end, he would sink like a rock, into the water all around him, all around him, everywhere.

There were worse ways to go out, he supposed. Why fight it?

"Come on, swim." He recognized the voice, but not face came to mind.

'_I can't…_'

"You can't swim?"

Had he said that out loud?

"I thought Temari told people to raise their hands if they couldn't swim. She had them grab floatation devices or some shit and get out first." Sasuke wasn't sure he remembered this part. He just knew that his body was heavy, that his clothes clung to his form and his skin had broken out in goose bumps. The arms were still around his waist, connected to a body and to a pair of kicking legs.

Sasuke's vision began to clear. "Uzumaki?" If he hadn't been in the middle of the ocean, frozen with fear and cold and helplessness he probably would have kicked the blond boy between the legs and put as much space between them as one can possibly attempt.

Unfortunately, he was in the middle of the ocean, frozen with fear and cold and helplessness.

"Next time," the blond child was mad now, that much was clear. "Do what you're told. Then, people wouldn't have to go into sinking planes so save your sorry ass. Damn Temari…damn everything…" Sasuke watched the blond boy bite the inside of his cheek.

"Where is everyone else?" Sasuke could hear his own voice, the small, shell-shocked whimper of a victim. He didn't want to be a victim; he wasn't going to drown. He cleared his throat. "Temari, Sakura, are they all right?"

The blond haired boy nodded. "They are." His eyes drifted to the space where their bodies met the water. "Not everyone is though. The stewardess for sure, she hit her head." So that's where the red cloud had stemmed from. Blood. The sticky, scarlet substance that separated the living from the dead.

Sasuke could feel the arms around his waist tighten. Even if it wasn't so uncomfortable, he felt it shock through his body, eat at his toes. Sasuke shut his eyes and took a cautious breath. He hated feeling so damn helpless. He had had enough of that for one life time.

"Fuck," the blond haired boy swore. "My leg is cramping up. You're a heavy son of a bitch Uchiha."

Sasuke nodded, vaguely, but that didn't make him any less afraid. '_Cramps?_' If the blond boy stopped swimming, the both of them would drown in open water. Nervously, Sasuke glanced over his shoulder to look at the space where the plane had been. It had long sunk under the surface of the water, leaving only a few floating items in its wake.

There were people all around them, Sasuke noticed, people swimming frantically and people floating, numb, on their seat cushions. Sasuke noticed the water had begun to claw at his collar bone. Before it had been just below where his shirt was. The blond boy holding him was clearly beginning to fail. This left Sasuke in a slight bind: if he let go, he would sink like a rock to the bottom of the ocean and if he didn't they would both go under.

In a flurry of motion, Sasuke shoved himself away from the boy holding him. He realized this wasn't the smartest thing to do but it seemed like the only thing to do. A jumble of thoughts raged through his mind, thoughts that if voiced would have shattered his arrogant-seeming exterior and revealed a twisted inferiority complex.

And then the sea drowned out his thoughts and he was under the water. Flailing wasn't helping, and he wouldn't flail much longer: the pale boy could feel the cold of the ocean numbing him from the outside in. His clothing hung to his body, slowing down his attempts to claw at the surface. His hair floated around his head like a dark halo that followed his movement when he turned to look. The water was clear despite the disturbances of people's feet moving in spastic circles.

The plane. It was sitting on the bottom of the ocean, wrecked and destroyed, a good hundred meters away. The water wasn't even that deep, maybe ten meters, but that was thoroughly deep enough to die. Sasuke was starting to regret his decision to leave the comfort of the blond boy's arms, even if it was probably better for the both of them.

However, he was suddenly jerked from his thoughts. Literally jerked. By two pairs of long arms. When his head broke the surface, Sasuke was faced with a pair of blonds who stared at him blankly.

"Uchiha, are you trying to drown yourself?" Temari asked. "I saw you go under and got over here as fast as possible…what happened?"

"I can't swim," Sasuke choked.

Temari shook her head. "Didn't I tell you to tell me if you couldn't swim?" Her gaze softened. "Nothing you can do about that now. Come on love, here. Hold on. There's some kind of landmass in that direction. It doesn't look too far…a mile or two maybe?" Sasuke winced. That wasn't far? "Naruto, how well can you swim?"

Naruto snorted. "Pretty damn well. Fat-ass Uchiha just weighs a ton." The words stung on some level.

Temari focused her eyes on Sasuke. "Sasuke, you can't swim at all?"

Sasuke shook his head. The salt water made his throat sick, sore and swollen. "No." It came out more as a croak and less like a word. Temari looked a little bit concerned. She had taken to holding him against her chest, which was probably a little easier for her than it had been for the blond boy simply because she was bigger. The blond boy had to have been Sasuke's weight. Sasuke felt small.

"Okay…look, stay here. Naruto, are your legs cramping?"

"I have another five minutes of holding him left. Not two miles."

"Naruto, find one of those little baggies with food in it attached to a seat cushion. Sasuke could use that." The only words Sasuke could understand now were his own name and 'food'. Everything was jumbling, a mess of psychedelic colors and feeling. His limbs had gone rigid, stiff from the cold, made heavy by his clothing. Temari's arms were warm around his body, the rhythmic swaying of her body as she kicked to stay afloat. '_Dear dear, how queer everything is today...and yesterday...things went on just as usual..._'

"Sure."

"Could you hurry?"

"Wha-- why?"

"Because I'm pretty sure he just passed out and I know his form didn't mention narcolepsy."

'_One pill makes you larger, one pill make you small...' _

* * *

**Lack of humor. I know. Oh well.**

**The words Sasuke is thinking come from Jefferson Airplane's 'White Rabbit'. That is an amazing song. Oh yes.**

**Review? I should cease asking. You already know it makes me really happy. I fully intend to update every day or at least have a good excuse why I didn't. Do I deserve thirty seconds of time? Besides, Gaara orders you to.**

**The real question though is...island or abandoned oil platform?**


	3. Mood: Easily Controllable

**I caved and brought back certain dead persons. Because. And the reviews made me tingly in my socks. Since someone asked: Sasuke let go of Naruto because he figured that it was better for just him to sink than have them both sink (since Naruto mentioned cramps). Poor, misguided Sasuke. **

**I love you. And I love Naruto. Don't own it, but I love you. You don't truly love what you own, do you? **

* * *

"We have no fresh water!' 

"There's fresh water here!"

"But for all we know it was poisoned by vengeful zombies!"

"True…I say we make Kiba drink it, and if he dies…well then we're screwed…"

"Zombies don't exist."

"Shows how much you know. It could be alkaline though."

The next time Sasuke was coherent, he was lying on his back in a pile of sand, staring up at a bright blue sky. There were no clouds, there was no anything. He could hear the ocean though, and he supposed that had to count for something in the long run.

"Look who's up!" the unmistakable cry of Kiba ripped him from his contemplativeness. "Man, we thought you died."

"Touching." Sasuke sat up. "Who's here?" Really, he wanted to know 'where is here', but Uchihas are above such despicable grammar. He would ask that later, when he was coherent enough to form a nice, well-crafted sentence.

"Um," Kiba rubbed his head, "Temari, Naruto, Hinata, Gaara, Kankuro…Neji I think too, and Shikamaru…Sakura is alright, and so is Ino…I think Shino might not have died…I could have sworn I saw Sai," the boy paused, "a couple of the …um…" Sasuke felt like smacking his head against the sand. This boy was an idiot. "Oh, and there are these two people from the plane that don't go to Konoha High…I can't remember their names or anything."

"That's it?"

"Yeah, everyone else drowned."

How final. Not that Sasuke really knew any of them. He preferred to have nothing to do with anyone because they were all so annoying. Anyone he would associate with had to be quiet and unobtrusive, which of course meant that they kept to themselves.

Therefore, they never had any sort of contact with Sasuke.

This suited the dark haired boy just fine.

"Up and at it, Sassafras, we're setting you to help build temporary shelter. We saved the iPods but unfortunately whatever cell phones might have survived have no service." Temari prodded him with one booted foot. "Shikamaru's GPS tracker, which isn't wet by some merciful act of ocean, is telling us we're in the middle of the Pacific. Where there is no island. We're on an uncharted landmass."

"Translation," cut in Kiba, "no one will be looking for us for ages and ages."

Sasuke flung himself back on the beach. "Really?"

"Really really. Come on, you're helping Naruto strip down palm trees to make a roof."

"Do I have to?" Sasuke snapped before he could help himself. He bit into the flesh of his lip to keep himself free of anymore unintentional outbursts.

"I suppose you could help Zabuza drag driftwood, but I don't think you would want to do that." Zabuza must have been one of the two miscellaneous plane crash survivors.

"I'll help Uzumaki strip down palm trees," Sasuke replied. Temari's face split into a grin.

"Thought you'd see things that way. Naruto is about a half mile in that direction. There's a clearing, you can't miss it. This whole island isn't that huge. Three miles by a mile and a half, tops." She offered Sasuke a rough, strong hand.

Without meeting her eye, Sasuke climbed to his feet, dusted the sand from his hands, and walked off in the direction Temari had pointed. Behind the beach there was a thick mass of what might be called jungle. The trees grew thick in patches. Sasuke found what looked like a haphazardly hacked path. He followed it: freshly cut, it must have been done by one of the plane's survivors. Probably Uzumaki. Uzumaki looked like the sort of person who would try and hack through the jungle.

The clearing was huge. Maybe not so much huge, but just…clear. Roughly fifty meters by thirty meters, it was pretty much covered in sand, except for a small patch of water that appeared to bubble from a spring. Across the clearing, a pile of palm fronds had begun to amass.

"Hello," Sasuke called. He could barely hear himself think: the sound of birds and people stamping through underbrush was nearly deafening, not to mention endlessly amplified by the sound of the ocean. "Hello." He raised his voice, but not by much. His throat was still swollen up from the salt of the ocean. It was light, probably really late morning, so he must have been unconscious for at least eighteen hours. It had been nearly dark when the plane crashed. Maybe a little more than nearly dark. His brain had been so frazzled that he could barely form coherent words and even then…time of day had not been of the greatest importance.

Now it was about eleven thirty? Maybe? Sasuke had never really been the sort of child who had been big on camping. Neither had his father, or his brother, so telling time by the sun wasn't a skill he had in his repertoire.

"Hey!" A loud voice boomed from somewhere behind him. Sasuke whirled around to come face to face with the blond child.

"Uzumaki," he greeted shortly, softly. It made him nervous, just a little bit, to be in the other boy's presence. Sasuke hadn't exactly been the most sociable of children and after…in recent years it hadn't gotten much better. Worse, maybe.

"Did Temari send you?" Naruto stood akimbo, face sweaty from physical labor and breath ragged from the same. Blue eyes, wild from being outside, peered back with amusement. His jeans were hacked off roughly just above the knees, probably to combat the heat. No doubt a smart move: not even midday and Sasuke could already feel his body becoming uncomfortably hot.

"She did." He nodded curtly. The blond boy's face split into a grin.

"I ask for someone who can work and she sends you?" He laughed shortly, dryly. "Well then, I guess I can use you." Uzumaki gestured and turned to go. "All you have to do," he said, "is to climb the trees, take hold of one of the strips of bark, and jump down. Your weight should pull it off. Work from the top down, otherwise you won't be able to get up to the top."

The blond boy pointed. Sasuke nodded uncomfortably, eying the tree with distaste. He had never actually climbed a tree. "How?" he asked. It only made sense to ask such a question.

"You've never climbed a tree before?" Sasuke's companion laughed heartily. "That's okay, they give me trouble too. Like this." He took hold of a strip of bark and hoisted his body upwards, grabbing another. He got maybe two meters off the ground before slipping and falling down to the sand. He did, however, have a long, tough strip of bark to show for it. "Try and get up as high as you can."

Sasuke nodded, stepping forward. He took a hold of the tree, gingerly, and pulled himself up. His arms felt so weak trying to heave his weight up.

"You want help there, Uchiha?"

Sasuke shook his head and ended up losing his footing, falling down onto the hot, white sand. "That hurt," he muttered incoherently. Uzumaki laughed.

"You're really bad at this. Come on, you just have to move faster." The blond boy took a running start at the tree and launched himself into the air, grabbing hold of the bark and moving upwards with what might be described as 'climbing monkey falling slug'. Not so much grace, but it knew what it was doing. Sort of.

Another strip of bark. "If you can't climb, at least drag those over into a pile." Uzumaki pointed at the stack of palm fronds. Sasuke stared at them with distaste. "God, you're such a girl."

Sasuke could feel his features harden with distaste. "Shut up Uzumaki. I can climb trees just as well as you can." Taking a running start, the boy launched himself at the palm tree. The bark felt rough under his fingers, biting, but he grabbed on anyway, ripping out a chunk of it off the trunk. The tree heaved under his weight.

The blond boy rolled his eyes. "Show off."

But Sasuke didn't care, because it pissed the blond boy off. Therefore, he was winning. He was winning.

And on it went. Hours of it. It had turned into a silent struggle, Sasuke had noticed, but he wasn't about to stop, even when the bark began to chafe the delicate skin on his hands. He was thankful his shirt was dark enough to he blood on it and have no one notice. At least, he didn't think anyone would notice.

When all the trees were as stripped as they could get, the sun was just a little past mid point. The blond boy had said it was about five or at least a quarter to and Sasuke really didn't have much choice to believe him. The stack of palm bark was huge and it took the both of them to shove it across the clearing.

Sasuke glanced down at his hands. They had begun to bleed, having ripped the smooth skin of his palms to shreds. The pads of his fingers were slit at least twice on each. The dark haired boy bit the inside of his cheek to keep from commenting on the pain. Glancing over, he noticed that Uzumaki's hands were just as destroyed.

"What?" Naruto demanded, glancing up at Sasuke with a coy, taunting grin. "Your hands hurt?"

Sasuke hid his hands behind his back impulsively. It only made him a little self conscious, but there had been worse. He shook his head. "I'm fine," he snapped. "None of your concern, idiot." He made a point of staring at the other boy's own hands.

"What?" The blond boy held up his hands to show them. "They're bleeding. They hurt. I'm going to ask Temari if any of the first aid kits survived. If they didn't, we could send someone out to ransack the plane. It's only about a half mile out, the horizon was misleading."

And then he walked away. Sasuke glared after him but followed anyway because damn, those cuts were nasty.

When the two boys showed Temari, she merely sighed and sat down on the beach in annoyance. "Wash them in the sea," she said, "if they get infected then you won't be able to work or anything. Besides, who knows what kind of nasty germs live on this island. The saltwater will cleanse them." She glanced up from whatever she was doing. It looked like building a fire. "The cuts are pretty shallow. Be thankful…they hurt more than they would if they were deep thin cuts. They'll heal faster." Sasuke glanced down to examine his hands. Indeed, it looked more like someone had taken a rather sharp spoon versus a couple of forks.

Somehow that fact didn't really make him feel much better.

At the edge of the water, Sasuke decided he might prefer to have infected hands. The ocean looked nasty. The pale boy stood at the edge of the water, letting the foam lick at his toes and recede, come forward and recede.

"Come on," the blond boy said in annoyance. "It's like, two feet deep. You're not going to drown." He hooked his arm around Sasuke's and yanked him forward. Sasuke lurched, tripping, and fell awkwardly to his knees. He struggled to his feet and found himself calf deep in water. "That wasn't so bad, was it?"

Sasuke shook his arm free and splashed his hands in the water. It stung his cuts miserably. "Don't do that," he hissed. "You know I can't swim." Guilt trips were never his forte, usually because they involved revealing some sort of weakness. Sasuke hated that.

Apparently, however, that was a good time to begin that particular brand of manipulation because the blue eyed boy looked instantly sorry. "I forgot." Sasuke glared stonily back. This didn't seem to be very effective for very long because very quickly Sasuke heard the other boy reprimand, "Come on, you have to wash them."

Sasuke glanced down at his hands. Most of the original blood was gone, leaving only what dared to spring from the slits, flowering crimson over his pale skin. "They are washed."

"Not like that." Another splash of water erupted from the ocean as the blond boy doused his hands again. "You have to wash everything out. Don't you see the little specks of dirt?"

No, but Sasuke could feel the tiny granules in his flesh and they hurt. They hurt a lot. He pushed his hands cautiously into the salt water and rubbed his hands together. They stung worse at the foreign liquid that found its way beneath his skin.

Neither of them said anything as they left the water, dripping wet. Sasuke's arms itched and he glanced down to find them red, sunburned. '_Great_,' he thought sarcastically. He bit the inside of his cheek again and padded onto the beach. '_It could be worse_.'

'_I could be alone._'

* * *

They sat around the fire in a circle, the fifteen survivors. It was dark and silent, with only the sound of the crashing waves to provide background noise. 

"I think," Temari said, "we should introduce ourselves. Only because two of the people here don't go to Konoha High." She pointed at the two people Sasuke didn't recognize. "You two want to start?"

"Well," began the first, a waif-like girl with long brown hair. "I'm Haku." She smiled shyly. "And I'm a boy."

There was a collective 'oh'.

"And this is Zabuza," Haku pointed jovially. "We're just happy we're not, you know, dead. Almost did. Grew up around water though." He smiled again, cheerful in the firelight. Zabuza stared impassively forward.

Temari shrugged. "Welcome to the Island of Lost High School Students and People Who Aren't High School Students But Will Be Grouped Under That Category Anyway. I'm Temari, eighteen." She turned her eyes on the blond boy. Sasuke noticed that people were staring at Haku and Zabuza distrustfully. Hell, they were staring at the people they went to kindergarten with distrustfully.

"I'm Uzumaki Naruto," the blond child bubbled. "Fifteen."

"Sai. I'm fifteen as well."

"Ino, same."

"Sakura. Fifteen. Who'd a thunk it?"

"Shikamaru. I'm fifteen as well. I think it's safe to assume everyone is fifteen unless otherwise stated, yes?" He glanced around the fire circle.

"Hyuuga Hinata."

"Hyuuga Neji, I'm sixteen."

"Kankuro, and I'm older than all of your bitches. I'm seventeen." He grinned unabashedly. "Well, older than everyone except Temari, but my sister is a geezer."

Temari threw a rock at her brother.

"Sasuke," Sasuke said when it was his turn. He tuned out everyone else's introductions. They weren't important, he knew them. "I'm also fifteen." He was talking to his knees again. Groups weren't his thing.

"That's everyone," Temari said. "Okay, well, most of the food survived, you can thank Sasuke for that one, huh?" She smiled kindly at Sasuke. He didn't smile back. "He did such a good job packing it." She held up a few bags of squished chicken cacciatore. "Beware airplane food. We have coconuts too, we're still waiting on the water."

Kiba grimaced. "It tasted fine, did you have to make me drink so much?"

Temari merely smiled thinly and didn't reply. "So, everyone, we're going to divide jobs like civilized people. First, we need a general leader."

People stared at her with a sort of 'um, duh' look on their faces.

"Would it be conceited of me to say 'I knew that'?"

"Yes."

Temari shot a scathing glare at Kiba. "Shelters? Zabuza, you think you're capable of lifting logs and such?"

Zabuza nodded reticently. "I'm sure."

"Alright, I'm putting Zabuza, Kiba, and Sai on dragging the wood for making shelters. Would stick Uzumaki on it, but we have to wait for his hands to heal."

The aforementioned parties nodded. "That'll work," Kiba said. "Going to be fucking sweet man…bonding man to man." That made Temari giggle because she's a perv like that.

"And Sakura. You keep them in-line making sure they actually do their work." This earned her a glare from Kiba. "So, next order of business. Sasuke, Naruto, since your hands are currently not in service," Naruto held up his hands to prove a point, "you two will be on official…" she paused. "Hell if I know. Naruto, teach them to swim well enough to become a salvage team. Haku, you said you're good with water."

Haku nodded.

"Okay, you too." Temari paused. "Well…anyone good at like, fishing? Or gathering food in general? Campers? Anyone have the sort of parents that make you go on camping trips every single damn year whether you have beriberi or not?"

Shino raised a hand silently.

"Yes?" Temari quirked her head.

"I know a bit about edible plants, mostly in relation to what bugs eat."

"My parents own a floral shop, I know about a lot about plants."

Silence.

"You know what? You go Shino. You rock on. Shino and Ino are on fruit collection duty. Try and make it last. Neji, I know you passed economics, you're in charge of that. Fishing? Anyone? Or net making? Oh come on, at least one of you had to be dragged down to the river and 'taught to be a man'. Or woman, depending on your family, I suppose. Conservatives who believe every boy should catch dinner? Really, really liberal hippies who don't believe in gender roles?"

Shikamaru raised a lazy hand. "My mother was really big on hammock making. Logically it's the same principal."

"No one else?" Temari glanced around the fire. "Everyone else is cooking, building a raft for the salvage team, and running errands like my little slaves." She paused again and sighed heavily. "Kankuro, I was going to be polite and not bring up the fact that you obsess over puppets and constantly spend hours and hours and hours and hours and hours trying to untangle the strings, but it might come up."

"Fine," Kankuro muttered. "I'm really good at untangling shit. You caught me. Shut up, ho-bag."

"Can you untangle sixty yards of floral wire?"

Blink.

"Always come prepared?"

"For what? This? The lynching of '08?"

"I was going to say '69, but sure."

* * *

**Excuse Temari's disorganized-ness.  You guys...you make me unimaginably happy. You have no idea. (People may one day understand you make me so happy, I update every day, or close to it. Because I love you.) **

**My only regret? That it had to be an island and not an oil platform. Why the island? Because...well...  
**

**Plot. Stupid, stupid plot. And the fact that I can have a lizard named Lee on this particular island. Someone brought him up and I remembered how much I loved him (note that the real, human Lee is not in this story, but he's neither on the island nor dead, he's in China over Spring Break).**

** Also, excuse double-post. I had a moment of insanity and tried to un-island it. Then my lovely wifey Kuso.Girl hit me upside the head and told me it was better before, so I re-islanded it. In the spand of 10 minutes. **

**Immashutuprightnow.  
**


	4. Mood: General Mistrust

**Lots of people asked why Gaara and Kiba weren't in the circle. They were, however Sasuke just tuned out their introductions since he already knew them (Sai wasn't mentioned either). They are there. Also…prepare for Lee the Lizard! Whom I own! Unfortunately, that's all I own.**

* * *

"No."

"Come on. If Gaara is in the water, there's no reason you shouldn't be."

Sasuke shook his head and clung to the sand with his toes. "I am not going to get into the water with you."

"Haku is here too."

"Haku looks a small wave would knock him over. No way." Sasuke sat down heavily on the wet sand. He drew his knees up to his chest, staring over then at the endless water. Two days. It had been two days on this stupid island, including time passed out, and he was already going to lose his mind. He decided there was no way Naruto was going to be able drag him into the water. At least that much sanity was left in his head.

He wasn't even sure why he had begun referring to the blond boy by name. Maybe it was because 'Blond Boy' was just too troublesome to think in his head. Not that it mattered, his head was a total mess, filled with a jumble of shapes and colors and words that made no sense.

"Gaara's in the water," Naruto pointed out. Indeed, Gaara was waist deep in the ocean, becoming quickly accustomed to the way the water felt. Every so often he would take another step out, further into the water. Sasuke shook his head. Gaara was crazy. Who willingly trusted another person like that?

"The faster you learn to swim, the faster you can be part of the salvage team. You don't even have to go in the water, you just have to be able to swim so that if you fall out of the raft." And so Gaara's motivation is revealed. Ah, the raft. Temari had set anyone not doing anything 'important' on building a raft so that Gaara, Haku, Sasuke and Naruto could swim-float-whatever out to where the plane had sunk and salvage it for supplies. Gaara and Sasuke's job was basically to make sure the raft didn't float away while Naruto and Haku ransacked whatever was left of the water logged plane. Not the safest of options, but Temari had pointed out that starvation was probably not the safest option either.

How the blond girl expected them to find a sunk plane was completely beyond them. Something about really clear water and a good sense of direction.

Oh, and the fact that it was right near a giant pinnacle of rock sticking out of the water. How Sasuke had missed that was beyond him, but irrelevant at the moment. What was relevant was the fact that he was never, ever going in the ocean. No matter what Naruto said.

"Fine, be that way. You're such a girl."

Last time he fell for that?

He ripped the skin off his hands.

"Forget it."

"Temari is like, hardcore socialist or something. She'll expect your share of the work, or else she'll like, shank you or something and cast you out of society."

"Since when are we society?" Sasuke snapped. He hated it here. This was not society. Society had hair gel and shampoo and toilets that flushed. Society had changes of clothing and paths you didn't have to chop down with a machete.

This is not society.

"We're society since we have a government, land, and populace," Naruto quoted. Sasuke could tell it was a quote because no way that idiot was smart enough to actually use those words in a sentence. "Because Temari says so."

Well that makes sense.

"She will shank you, it will hurt."

Sasuke decided he would rather not be shanked.

"Fine. What do I have to do?"

"Get. In. Water." Naruto's eyed narrowed. "Have you not been listening to a word I've said this entire time?"

Sasuke merely raised an eyebrow. "Does it look like I've been listening?"

Naruto took this as an invitation to yank the Uchiha into the water. Sasuke thrashed, tripping over his legs and into the water. Panic tingled at the edge of his fingertips, spreading down the length of his arm and into his stomach, his brain, the back of his eyes.

"It's two fucking feet deep. Don't have a hemorrhage."

Sasuke glared up at the blond boy staring down at him. Granted the water did only come up to his ankles, and maybe it wasn't really all the deep, and so what if he had a hemorrhage? He wouldn't. If he were going to die, he was going to drown. Drown, or be lynched with Ino's ungodly amount of floral wire.

"If I die, Uzumaki, I'm coming back for you and I'm going make you sorry."

"What, are you going to do, try to blind me with your flawless white skin? Or strangle me with your oh-so-glossy hair? Or maybe you'll just spray me with your non-existent hairspray and light an invisible match?"

If Sasuke didn't have so much bloody self-control, he would have hit the idiot hovering above him. However, Sasuke did have so much bloody self-control, and Naruto did have an entire ocean behind him. That was kind of an unfair advantage.

'_Oh well,_' Sasuke seethed. '_I'll figure something out._' He was above mindless pranking, but what about mindful pranking?

"Get up," Naruto ordered, prodding Sasuke with one bare, tanned foot. "Or else I'll sic Tema on you and then you'll wish you had gone down with the plane."

Sasuke glared and stood up. His clothes were soaked with salt-water and clinging to his form. It was too cold and too hot all at the same time. He stood in the sand with the ocean swirling around his ankles and glared. He could feel the sun baking into his hair and he could feel his skin turning red from the light, but that didn't mean he was going to give up and do something else.

Mostly because the 'something else' involved working as Temari's little messenger slave. Uchihas have pride. Honestly.

"See, not so hard." Naruto beamed. Sasuke grimaced. "Oh come on, don't be so prissy, Sassy-cat." His arms rested uncomfortably on Sasuke's waist, even though they were still in pretty shallow water. Up to their chests, if you could call it shallow. Sasuke found it vaguely calming to have something sturdy to hold onto, even if that particular something was blond and obnoxious and tactless.

At least it was blond and obnoxious and tactless with swimming capabilities.

Sasuke stood there for a couple more minutes, longing to jerk away and run back to shore as fast as possible. Unfortunately that would entail letting go of Naruto and stranding himself chest-deep in water. Which was very wet and very difficult to do much in.

"I want to go back."

"Seriously?" Naruto raised an eyebrow. "We just got out here, you know."

Sasuke's lips folded into a thin line. "I'm sure. I want to go back right now."

Naruto rolled his eyes and started for shore, absentmindedly latching his hands around Sasuke's wrist. Sasuke didn't let out the breath he had been holding until both feet were submerged in hot, dry sand. Naruto rolled his eyes at Sasuke, eyeing the shivering teenager up and down with a mixture of distaste and amusement.

"Enjoy the shankage."

And then he was gone, submerged in the water. The blond boy resurfaced in front of Haku and Gaara, both of whom looked pretty content to sit in the water. Sasuke rolled his eyes and debated sacrificing whatever little dignity he had left by sticking out his tongue, but thought better of it.

Only thing now was, he had to face the _other_ blond one.

* * *

"So how was everyone's first day of real work?" 

"My arms ache."

"If I have to count one more mango…"

"I'm seeing double."

"I hate the water."

"My fingers are on strike."

"Sasuke is an asshole."

"Second that."

"Third that."

"Hn."

Temari smiled. "Ah, I'm glad it went so well. Okay, does anyone have anything to say about the day? You know, what make our happy little community," this was greeted with various snorts and eye rolling, "run a bit smoother?"

At this, several conversations erupted at once in a cone of noise and angry accusations aimed at the same person. Over, and over, and over again.

"Sasuke has a stick shoved up his ass."

"Sasuke can't pull his own damn weight."

"Sasuke is a girly, impractical, over-dramatic irrational logically impaired sissy."

"Sasuke--"

"Anything that doesn't involve insulting Sasuke's intelligence, integrity, or anal cavity?"

No one said anything for a long time until finally Sakura cleared her throat and raised her hand politely. Sasuke looked at her gratefully. She had some sort of decency, he hoped.

"I found a lizard," she said. "It's cute. I decided to name it Lee, because the real Lee isn't here and stuff." Sakura. Loyal friend. Not the most creative person on the uncharted landmass. "Isn't it cute?" From somewhere totally unknown to the rest of the castaways, Sakura produced what appeared to be an iguana. "Do you want to hold him?" She held it out to Gaara, who was unfortunately directly beside her.

The red-head shook his head, recoiling in horror. "No. It's disgusting."

"Shut up, he's beautiful." Sakura yanked the iguana against her bosom. It clawed frantically, attempting to free itself from the grasp of the teenager. "Don't you dare insult him. He's got feelings too you know! Isn't that right, Lee? You're so much smarter than that dumb red-head."

Gaara glared, eyes glowing with homicidal rage. Sasuke briefly wondered if Sakura deserved it, but probably not. The lizard didn't either. Wasn't his fault he was a green freak of nature adopted by a somewhat ditzy school girl. Honestly.

"_Anata ha wakawakashii tokage nandesu ne? Hai! Kore hontou sa!" _

Temari sighed and rubbed her temples. "Does anyone have anything to say that doesn't involve obsessions with strange and possibly harmful animals, insults aimed at Sasuke, or complaints lodged towards body parts?"

There was no sound.

"Okay then. Now is time for the sleeping arrangements, seeing as we have completed five temporary shelters in the clearing in the course of two days. Speaking of which, please give a hand to Zabuza, Sakura, Kiba, and Sai who have not only crafted huts from palm fronds but dragged an ass load of drift wood around, preparing to create more permanent shelter tomorrow."

This speech was met with rather unenthusiastic applause.

"Okay, that's three to a sleeping…shelter…thing…yurt. Please avoid co-ed arrangements if you intend to procreate, unless all three parties are willing and nothing gets broken." Temari smiled perversely. No one moved. "Do I have to be the big girl and divide everything up?"

Apparently.

"Sakura, Ino, Hinata, you three…Sasuke, Naruto, Sai don't kill each other," she paused, "Kiba, Shino, Neji and Haku, Zabuza, Shikamaru. Kanky, Gaa-honey, you two are with me. There, no one is going to rape anyone else and no body hates anyone else. Yet. And if you do?" A grin split across the girl's face, "I DON'T CARE!"

Sasuke sighed, rubbing his temples. It wasn't like there was much to do to get off the island, or make the situation better, but he could hope. The yurt-type-structures were decent sized and Sai wasn't too obnoxious. Maybe everything would run smoothly.

"I'm going to knife you in your sleep."

* * *

**I was so tempted to put a bastardization of the 'Barney' lyrics right here, you have no idea.**

**I just realized I have no idea where this is going. Any imput? People you want to kill off with beriberi? Malaria? Plot devices? (I feel bad Tenten is gone...I've decided she's visiting family in Gifu.)**

**Also, Sakura is baby-talking the lizard in Japanese. It says, roughly: "You're a youthful lizard, aren't you? Yes! It's true!" But it's not important, honestly. I'm just showing off. Ignore me. **


	5. Mood: Systems Failing

**Wow…I got so many good ideas from my reviewers…I never thought anyone would actually help me out o.O You guys have given me inspiration. And I fully intend to use all the ideas. Eventually. Because something tells me that this fan fiction is going to be **really**, really, really long…lots of words about something I have no claim to…**

* * *

"Since Sasuke is refusing to go back in the water, Sai, you're now on the salvage team, Sasuke, you're now cooking." 

"As you wish," Sai nodded.

"Why Sai?" Naruto demanded. Temari shrugged.

"He burns stuff really badly. And he can actually swim. And he does what you ask him, to some extent. So anyway, Uchiha, you're with me. We are going to build the raft together and then we're going to make lunch. If you slack off for one second I'm going to--"

"SHANK YOU!" Naruto shouted from the thicket of bushes he had disappeared into.

"Yes, Sasuke, shank you. And it will hurt." Sasuke rolled his eyes and followed the blond girl out of the major clearing and into a slightly smaller clearing behind it. Hyuuga Hinata sat there cross legged in front of a small fire. Beside her, her cousin was obsessively counting what appeared to be bananas.

"I finished the mangoes," he shouted. "Rationed them all out. Now…now the bananas…" he sighed and resumed taking inventory. Temari smiled slightly to herself.

"Okay, this is our new slave labor. Say hi Sasuke."

Hinata and Neji's heads jerked up in unison. "If he burns down the clearing," Neji warned, "and I have to count a new batch of mangoes…" he merely trailed of threateningly, sending the dark haired boy a glare that could have probably peeled off his already peeling skin. Sasuke leaned back on the balls of his feet to avoid the gaze of the angry upperclassman.

"He won't," Temari said shortly. "Because we've received complaints from," she paused, "everyone he worked with, actually. Hell, Ino got mad, and she practically worships Passive-Aggressive one."

'_So now I have no name?_'

That was not surprising.

"Okay, Sasuke, you need to see how Shikamaru and Kankuro are doing on the nets. Shika said he had it up and running but they haven't had any luck yet with the fishes. Apparently the ones here are smarter than we gave them credit for." Temari tapped her fingers in the dirt. "There was an unspoken 'go right now' on the end of that, FYI. They're that way. Run 'til you hit the ocean."  
Sasuke took off through the thicket of woods. The trees were scratchy, yanking at his not-so-fresh clothing, tousling his hair. When he managed to get through the other side, he was sure he looked like he had been put through the blender. How undignified.

Brushing his body free of burrs and leaves, Sasuke surveyed the area. Indeed, Shikamaru and Kankuro were knee deep in the ocean, standing very still, holding a rigid net out between them. "What do you want, Uchiha?" Kankuro demanded. Aside from his lips, he didn't move an inch. Sasuke cleared his throat.

"Temari wants to know how you're doing."

"Fine. Fucking fine. Tell her that my feet are going numb and the fish are like, Mandy Curry or whatever."

"Marie Curie," Shikamaru corrected. "Won the Nobel for Chemistry and Physic and gave birth to a daughter who won the chemistry award in 1930."

"So those fish are pretty damn smart."

Shikamaru rolled his eyes and dropped his half of the net. "Tell Temari she needs to work faster on that raft of hers so that we can actually go out and catch real fish. Or any fish. This is a total waste of time. Go. Now."

Sasuke crossed through the Wild Only Ten Feet Deep Jungle back into the clearing and relayed the boys' messages to Temari. The blond girl rolled her eyes and glanced up from the fire she was tending with Hinata.

"You tell my good for nothing brother and my good for nothing…" she paused, seeking a noun to describe Shikamaru, "pseudo-lover that if they want the salvage raft to be done any quicker, they can build it."

Sasuke traipsed back through the woods. By now, there was a solid path through the trees and undergrowth, even if it was still a pain in the ass to get through. Sasuke stood on the beach, sunburned and bleeding.  
"Temari says if you want a raft, you have to build it."

"Kankuro said he'd work on it if you hadn't made him try and catch fish."

"Temari says you're a failure who got out smarted by fish."

"Kankuro says you're a whore."

"Temari says you can stay out there all day for all she cares."

"Shikamaru says he's hungry."

"Temari says she sorry, but lunch is in a couple of hours. You can work on the raft now, it's down by the beach right now."  
"Kankuro says--" Sasuke broke off. "You know what? You can ask him yourself." Sasuke stalked away, out of the mini-clearing and into the major one. The one with yurts and other fun stuff like that. He crawled into the shelter he shared with Sai and Naruto and brooded.

He brooded for a really long time. In fact, he brooded so long that he fell asleep, lured by the sound of waves and the calling of birds and the way the dirt smelled so good underneath his hands and aching, burning, torrid body. The yurt of palm fronds, palm fronds decked with _his blood_, provided shade that cooled his red, tortured skin and let his mind rest.

Rest, however, might be a deceptive, lying verb because his sleep was not particularly peaceful. Discomforting, wild thoughts wove their way through his hair, into his ears, around in his head. Thoughts of people, of faceless, unremembered strangers with raspy voices and hard, unyielding hands that threatened his pale skin bubbled from the recesses of his mind. Dreams that made themselves into realities twisted from his eyes, pooled around him.

He remembered his parents, and their blood, and the faceless relatives who told him how sorry they were his brother had gone mad. It was always his brother…never 'my nephew' or 'my grandson' and when he heard others talk about it, it was always, 'Mikoto's son' and never his name.

Dreams were like stupid movies that Sasuke found he couldn't turn off, even when he wanted to more than anything, when he would have given an arm and a leg to drill them out of his head and leave them to sink into the ground. Leave them to sink into someone else's mind.

The constant onslaught of half-remembered experiences would have probably continued their merciless assault on Sasuke's brain, had e not been so rudely interrupted with:

"Uchiha, get your ass out here right now!" This, odd-enough, came from Kiba. Sasuke poked his head out of the yurt. "Temari is looking for you and boy, she is pissed off."

"I fear the mythical shank age," Sasuke spat back sourly.

Kiba laughed a high, hallow laugh. "Mythical? You're the one bleeding my boy. You're the one bleeding." He chuckled and disappeared towards the northern beach where they had campfire every night, presumably to drag more wood. Sasuke wasn't actually sure any more. He didn't care. He just wanted off, he wanted off now, and whatever it took to get off, he was going to do it. Pressing pale fingers to his stinging cheeks, Sasuke found that indeed, there was blood on his skin. He must have been sleeping a while, too, because it came off in dry flakes. '_I wonder how long…_'

His thoughts were again interrupted by Temari.

"Uchiha! Out here! Now!" Obediently, Sasuke climbed from the yurt and stood as tall as he could to face the blonde-chick-screaming.

Temari didn't look mad.

When Temari 'looked mad', her grey eyes were burning with hate and her lips contorted into a thin line of rage. Her normally fairly pale cheeks blossomed into a hue not unlike the color of blood that had dried and bleached in the sun. Her hair stood on end, in four sections, when she looked mad, and her stance was that of a merciless warrior preparing to slaughter a village of children.

No, Temari was beyond mad. At that moment, Sasuke almost wished he had stayed asleep.

"No. See, around here, you do your share of the work. You don't disappear for eight hours and not tell anyone." Sasuke wrinkled his nose, _'that long? Really?_' "You could have died."

"Eight hours?" Looking around, he noticed it was almost dark.

"Yeah. Eight hours." Temari narrowed her eyes. "You know what? You can find your own food and your own shelter, and your own…" She was shaking by now. "Get a life Uchiha. If I see you anywhere," her eyes narrowed to thin slits, "If I see you anywhere outside the west beach until I come and get you, I will personally carry you into the ocean and leave you there. Go. Now."

Did he have a choice?

* * *

The west beach was the smallest of the beaches. It was the base of the isosceles-triangle shaped island, possibly a mile long and surrounded by rocky outcroppings that clearly marked the end of the beach approximately a quarter mile from the shore. Sasuke knew this because he had just spent the last two hours walking the beach, back and forth two times, and trying to collect driftwood to build a fire. How he intended to start one was totally beyond him, but he'd come up with something. If he climbed the rocks, he could peer over them at the camp fire where everyone else was. 

He felt lonely.

Maybe it was because he was, indeed, all alone.

Was this his fault? Completely. He deserved every single second of this starving, cold isolation. It was his fault he didn't know how to cook, or swim, or built shelters. At least, it had to be. As much as he would rather not admit it, he was completely useless at most things, especially when he was running on barely anything and no sleep.

Leaning against the rocks, the pale boy nestled into one of the many crevices. At least the wind was coming from the north and the rocks pretty much surrounded him on that front, so it wasn't too cold. It was cold enough to hurt though. He was starving anyway.

His thoughts, which had a tendency to be interrupted so who cares anyway, were immediately broken in half by the sound of someone climbing the backside of the rocks. One handed, by the sound of it. Sasuke stood and climbed up the rocks, peering over the edge of them to see who was approaching.

"Uzumaki, what do you want?"

Naruto shrugged. He was holding a long piece of wood that happened to be burning. It was almost threatening, actually, the way it burned in the nighttime. "We were afraid you were starving."

"Temari isn't soulless?"

"No, but it wasn't her who was worried anyway. She's still really, really mad. Sakura suggested we bring you fire and," Naruto paused, holding out a mango, "food." He grinned, passed the burning stick off to Sasuke, and jumped down to Sasuke's side of the rocks. "See? We're not all bad."

Sasuke sighed and lit his little stack of driftwood on fire. "There's no food over here," he stated dully.

"Temari will get over it."

"Really?"

"Probably. We still need someone to like, help with the salvage team and stuff, if you'd rather have food."

Sasuke shuddered. Hard choices, hard choices.  
"I'll think about it." The fact that he would rather starve to death on a freezing cold island than go back into the ocean sort of mortified him.

"Well…" Naruto rubbed the back of his head awkwardly. "You want company? I mean, it's lonely and stuff over here. I mean, I think it is because I haven't ever been over here by myself before, so yeah…" Sasuke shrugged and said nothing. "Was that a yes or a no?" Naruto blew gently on the glowing fire stick, helping it ignite the pieces of driftwood Sasuke had drug into a pile.

"That was a yes."

"Oh, and Temari gave me this," Naruto held up Sasuke's iPod. "I don't know why. You can have it back, if the batteries will last very long."

Sasuke shrugged and took the piece of technology from his classmate's hand. "Okay." He averted his eyes from the stare of his peer and fixated them on the glowing embers of the fire. He stretched his palms out to try and absorb what little warmth they gave off.

"You know, Temari wouldn't really cast you out in the ocean." Naruto moved forward, resting his hands above the flames. His tanned face lit up strangely in the dancing fire light. "She's not that heartless." Somehow, that didn't sound so comforting to Sasuke. None of this sounded comforting.

"I think she might be."

"She's not," Naruto assured the paler boy. "Hey, did you get sunburned?"

Sasuke nodded. "Yeah."

"That sucks." The two boys fell silent. "I have to go now, because they're going to wonder what happened to me and I'm not really supposed to be over here. I told them I was going to the latrine." Naruto stood and began to scale the rocks again. "Hope to see you tomorrow Sasuke."

Sasuke watched the blond boy disappear over the rocks, leaving him with only a mango and a particularly lonely fire.

* * *

**I don't like this chapter much at all. Feh, oh well. **


	6. Mood: Uneasiness

**In which the chapter focus moves briefly to Shikamaru and later, Naruto. For no real reason. It might seem a bit pointless, but it's all for purpose. And if it seems like nothing is happening...we're approximately 11.5 percent done. There's time enough. I enjoy being sadistic with characters I don't own.**

* * *

Shikamaru was not so fond of the sun.

He had been, long ago, as a small child, but now, in the heat of the island doing nothing but holding up a net made out of badly pieced together floral wire, he was full on ready to hit something small and vaguely vulnerable.

Well, maybe not hit something, but he was sure as hell ready to take out some serious rage on a Sudoku puzzle or some shit. Oh yes. Feel the rage of 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9. Feel it. Fear it. At least Shikamaru could brood in silence, stare off into space, the works, without actually having to do much beside stand knee deep in water.

"So does Temari make your pants tight?"

The waves were actually pretty nice this time of year, really blue and--

"What?!"

The explanation that Shikamaru so feared was luckily prolonged by the fact that the net disintegrated in their hands and the pieces of pokey floral wire began to float away in various directions.

Kankuro sighed. "This is fucked. Come on, _gitei_."

"_Gitei?_" Shikamaru raised an eyebrow. "Feeling a sudden urge to embrace your cultural roots?"

Kankuro shrugged. "It's just not the same in English, calling people 'brother-in-law'. Too bulky, besides, it's so much more fun in foreign languages." Kankuro smiled almost lecherously. Absentmindedly, Shikamaru noted he looked an awful lot like Kiba.  
"You're made of fail."

"Oh, it's the Weber-nets talking, isn't? Miss your blogsphere?"

Shikamaru smacked his palm against his forehead and walked back onto the shore of the south beach. Kankuro had set in him for the past three hours, using every possible euphemism for 'you're screwing my sister'.

Well he wasn't. And if he was, he wouldn't say anything.

This whole rumor started from the fact that Temari called people in her good graces 'love', or 'sweetie', or 'my pseudo-lover', or 'my bitch'. Since Shikamaru was never one to do much to get on Temari's bad side, he tended to be on the receiving end of those comments a lot of the time.

Of course everyone took this to mean something else entirely.

'_Which it was clearly not!_' Shikamaru added in his head. '_Just because she's an empowered, beautiful, sexually liberated woman does not mean I see her as an object I can acquire or that has acquired me._' He shot a glare over at Kankuro. '_We're just friends._'

Not that he wouldn't mind being more than friends.

But for now, everyone had to be set straight. If word got around to Temari, she would probably hit him upside the head with something. Or, worse, she would strand him over with Uchiha. That would probably be as bad as having all his fingernails ripped out. Angry feminists scared him. Well, most did. He supposed he was a feminist too, and when he was angry he wasn't particularly threatening. Actually, he might be, but he rarely got angry enough to tell.

Not that he really wanted to try and psychoanalyze all of this while fixing a net made out of green metal tubing. His fingers ached from trying to twist it all back together. He figured he should have just strung it like a hammock, but no, Kankuro insisted on little links twisted together like chain male.

Clearly, that idea failed all over the place.

"I say we should weave it and not link-twist," Shikamaru suggested.

"In your pants," Kankuro replied automatically. "Wait…what?"

"Weave. Not link. Link bad. Link fall apart." He felt so dirty, degrading to sentence fragments, but honestly Kankuro seemed to understand them better. "Not dating your sister." Just for good measure. Apparently Kankuro took that to mean 'I'm whipped and not saying anything', but at least he kept his mouth shut. Shikamaru was thankful for that.

But at the end of the day?

All they had was a useless net made of floral wire.

* * *

"Okay…we're done." Temari leaned against a smooth, stripped palm tree. "It looks good."

"Like one of those log houses," Kiba muttered.

Indeed, in the course of two days, the entire clearing had been turned into a settlement with four major structures crafted from driftwood, surrounded by a few smaller ones. How was it done? Group efforts, rather shocking endurance, utter devotion and, of course, threatsbribesbuildbuildbuildsubliminalmessaging. "You guys did a pretty good job," Naruto said, grinning and prodding one of the sides. "The logs look heavy." He wouldn't know, he had just thatched the roofs.

"They were," Sakura assured. "But not too heavy, right Kiba?"

"Shut up."

Naruto rolled his eyes at his friends. The whole dynamic was just a little off kilter, always one step away from a blow-up, but being one step away from losing your mind and jumping into the ocean is not the same as losing your mind and jumping into the ocean. Not the same at all.

"Move the fire inside that." Temari pointed at the central shelter. "It's going to rain soon. And even if it's not then…well…" She shrugged. "Better safe than sorry." Hinata scurried into the adjoining clearing and returned minutes later with a pair of burning sticks. She climbed haphazardly into the main shelter and lay them in there, scurrying back and forth to collect more sticks to build up the fire.

"Are we all going to fit in there?" Kiba asked. Temari shrugged.

"Probably. It's huge."

And then it started to rain.

"How did you do that?" Kiba demanded. Temari pointed up at the storm clouds that had obviously been there for several minutes. "That's cheating." He shook his head and scrambled into the shelter. Naruto followed. Surprisingly large actually. The rest of them packed in and there was still room beneath the roof of palm bark. '_Must have something to do with the space time continuum._' He glanced around, taking in the craftsmanship. Most of it had been pieced together with floral wire. Lots and lots of floral wire.

"Very nice," Ino observed. "You did good Forehead."

Sakura rolled her eyes but threw an arm around her friend anyway. "Yeah, yeah, my muscles ache and my head hurts. You had better be damned thankful you don't have to sleep in the rain." The two girls laughed quietly to each other, their voices lowering to hushed whispers Naruto couldn't make out over the crackling fire. Despite the holes in the walls, most of which had been patched with various palm parts and of course, floral wire, the fire kept the shelter pretty hot.

"Who wants to go get Uchiha?"

Oh yeah…him…

Kiba raised his hand. "I'll do it."

Temari shrugged and turned her steel-grey eyes on Kiba. "Don't tell him we're sorry, don't tell him that we want him here, don't even tell him it's my idea. Just tell him to come back with you. He's been out there two days with no food or water. He better have learned something."  
Kiba crawled from the shelter and disappeared into the rain. Temari leaned against a wall, careful not to hit too much and Naruto messed with the edge of his clothes.

"Next order of business," Temari talking again, her normally harsh voice kind of unnaturally quiet, even in the enclosed space. She had managed to shove thirteen people into a shelter that couldn't be more than nine by thirteen feet. Made out of drift wood. And palm thatch. "Clothing. Needs to be washed. Most of you stink like pigs." She wrinkled her nose. "Anyone able to wash stuff?"

Haku's hand shot up so fast that it almost grazed the roof. "Me! I went on sabbatical with Zabuza and had wash all of our clothes. I'm really good at that!" His round, androgynous face split into a pleasant smile. Temari nodded.

"And anyone else who can do that, do that. Second order of business, Kankuro and Shikamaru finally caught fish. They're currently in the smoking room and will be done smoking sometime tomorrow, probably in time for dinner. Speaking of which, dinner is a lovely menagerie of mangoes. And more mangoes. And water." Temari gathered the small piles of fruit into one large pile and began passing them one by one to her left. "Three to each person, pass them down to the end first.

Neji narrowed his eyes. "Those took a really long time to count."

"I'm sure they did honey." She passed another mango to Ino, who sat directly to her left. Neji shot her death glares. Really ferocious glares.

When Kiba returned fifteen minutes later, he reported back to the mango-consuming teenagers that 'Uchiha wasn't coming back' because he's 'being a moody girly son of a bitch'.

"I'll go after him," Naruto suggested. "I mean, I have an idea."

"Do that."

"What should I say?"

"I thought you had an idea."

"I lied."

"Say whatever the hell you want. Tell him he radiates heat and Sai is cold at night. Tell him Hinata's in love with him. Hell, you can tell him you're in love with him if you want, but bring him back here. It's raining. I feel bad. Not really bad, but kind of bad. Pseudo-bad." Temari shed her sweatshirt and shoved it into Naruto's hands. "Don't freeze your ass off Uzumaki."

Naruto rolled his eyes. '_Maybe she feels bad?_' Managing to squeeze out of the shelter, Naruto began carefully padding over the dirt that turned to underbrush that turned to sand, soaked with the rain. It was really unpleasant rain. Not just the wet kind, the cold kind.

That is by far the worst.

"Hey Uchiha," Naruto called over the rocks. "You dead?" At receiving no reply, the blond, soaking boy climbed deftly over the rocks and jumped down to the sand. Sasuke, who had curled up between two rocks, didn't even raise his head. "Temari says you have to come back."

"I already told dog boy I'm not dealing with all your bullshit," the dark-haired boy growled, more to his knees than anything else. "Shut up and leave me alone." His voice had grown thick with rain and snot and loneliness.

"Well you didn't tell me. Come on, it's cold out here. Temari didn't mean it. Well, she did, but she doesn't mean it anymore." He hoped. She had asked one of them to drag him back, but then again, Temari had a tendency to care about others even when she wanted to burn off all their hair. He should know. Kankuro had been on the receiving end of that once.

"I'm fine here." Sasuke shifted to scowl up at Naruto. Naruto shrugged and disappeared behind a rock. Behind a rock and only behind a rock, considering he was just waiting. No way anyone was fine in this weather. He wasn't even fine, and he had borrowed Temari's sweatshirt, which had actually kept him pretty dry.

"Oh, shut up. You're bleeding, soaking, freezing and sunburned. What happened to the Uchiha dignity?" Naruto smiled teasingly. Sasuke's scowl deepened, the lines on his face merely growing darker in the shadows cast by the bright moon and the glowing rain.

"Fuck you."

"So you are capable of using the language of common folk. Who'd a thunk it?" To this, Sasuke merely stood up, inching his way out of the gap between the rocks, and shoved Naruto hard backwards. The blond boy slipped backwards, falling hard on the packed sand. "So you want a fight, Uchiha? I can give you one of them."

He hit Sasuke so hard his hand hurt. Couldn't have felt so good to get that in the stomach. Sasuke replied with a feral growl, kicking ruthlessly at Naruto's bony, tanned legs. Naruto jumped backwards instinctively but found himself hit in the jaw on the rebound. '_So maybe he can pack a punch,_' the blond boy thought miserably, rubbing his chin. '_That would have probably hurt a hell of a lot more if he hadn't been dehydrated and shit._'

The short-lived fight, however, ended with Naruto taking rough grasp of Sasuke from behind and dragging him backwards towards the ocean. Probably not the smartest of moves, since it made Sasuke go entirely ballistic, but certainly effective.

"You know," Naruto explained, releasing the dark haired boy from his grasp, "Temari wants you back because she feels bad. What the hell is wrong with you?" He glared ferociously. It was almost threatening. Sasuke refused to meet his peer's eyes. "I asked--"

"I heard you."

"Well?"

"I don't know."

Anger dissipated with the waves. '_He looks pathetic,_' Naruto noted. Pathetic things deserve sympathy, even if they don't really want it. And man, Sasuke was the pinnacle of pathetic-ness. "Come back then. We have mangoes. They're pretty good actually." Naruto offered the boy a hand.

Sasuke ignored it, opting instead to stand on his own. "Fine," he hissed. He offered no explanation and Naruto needed none. They walked back from the west beach, headed east and vaguely south until they reached the clearing. A fire still burned in the main shelter, clearly illuminating at least seven people still within it.

"Hey," Temari called when both soggy teenagers climbed into the drift-wood structure. "You brought back girly-boy. Good to have you back Uchiha." She grabbed a mango out of Neji's grasp and handed it roughly to the younger boy. "All yours. Beware the pit." She sounded as apologetic.

Well, as apologetic as one can sound when offering up a mango.

"Hn." Sasuke nodded curtly and began peeling away the mango's skin with bitten, ripped up nails. The juice squirted down his palms, into the cuts that layered over them and he winced almost imperceptibly.

"See, not so hard? Hey, Sai ditched to go to sleep because apparently the water took it out of him…furthest little shelter-hut-yurt-thing from here. It's the one that doesn't have any noise coming from it, unless Sai has some little 'invisible friends' that he neglected to mention under the 'mental health' portion of his permission slip."

Naruto grinned and stretched. "Yeah, well…I wouldn't put it past him. Could have sworn I heard him talking to some of the art in the art room last month. Anyway…Sasuke, I'm leaving you in the care of Temari and Sakura and Ino and everyone else whose names are escaping me 'cause it's too damn late."

"I've only known you since what…pre-school?" Kiba demanded indignantly.

"Kindergarten," Naruto corrected. "Night y'll insomniacs."

Maybe tomorrow would involve a little less psychological torture.

But then again, where's the fun in that?

* * *

**Almost 100 reviews! 100th reviewer gets a...something...I don't know what. Something. I should offer up a cameo in the form of a memory/story. Oh yes. That will do nicely. **

**And don't worry, good stuff will show up eventually. Probably GaaNeji rather soon.**


	7. Mood: Sick

**I have full legal rights to everything, as soon as I change all the names and backstories. (And the Edward Scissorhands references down there in Sasuke's dream-o-doom).  
**

**Oh yeah.**

* * *

"You think he's going to kick the bucket?" 

"No, he's not going to 'kick the bucket' Kiba. He's just…passed out and shit. Well, he was passed out and shit. He's awake now. That's what counts, right?" Sasuke felt something fleshy prodding him in the ribs. A foot, by the feel of it. "Up and at 'em, oh Sleepy One." One black eye focused on Temari's face and then snapped shut. "Oh don't be like that. You're such a whiner."

"You did kind of leave him to his own devices for two days."

"Yeah, well…Neji says mangoes were missing. I mean, who better to trust than the mango king? Looks like Uchiha is a little smarter than we gave him credit for." She knelt down beside Sasuke. "A lot smarter, I suppose. You want some water?"

Sasuke cracked his eyes open and nodded vaguely. Temari smiled and crawled from the almost empty yurt, abandoning the dark haired boy with Kiba. "Well," the dog haired boy said offhandedly, "I suppose you're back in good graces with her. She does feel bad. Honestly."

Sasuke went to sit up but found himself feeling just a little disoriented to do so. His body ached from the scuffle he had been the day prior (at least, he assumed it was a day prior) and his throat felt thick and useless.

Temari returned a few minutes later with a hollowed out coconut filled with water. She passed it carefully to Sasuke, watching him drink carefully from it: sloppy, desperate drinks. Sasuke choked, sputtered, trying to get the liquid down his throat.

"I'm sorry," Temari blurted when he had finished. "I didn't think your body would take it so hard." She seemed genuinely apologetic, something that struck Sasuke as strange. "You don't have to do anything to day, you know, if you're going to get sicker. I didn't mean to blow up at you like that."

Sasuke shook his head, sitting up deliberately. "I'll do something. Anything you need me to."

Temari's mouth stretched into a small smile. "Oh, that's a good boy. Come on, you think you're up to helping me de-vein some shrimp? Kankuro and Shikamaru caught some on the east side of the island." Sasuke nodded, even if he was suspicious in the blond girl's change in attitude. He followed her carefully out of the drift-wood yurt he had found himself in and into the clearing. "It's a nice day," she said softly. "We should sit outside."

The two teenagers found a spot on the ground, wet from the heavy rain the night before, and spread out a pile of grey shrimp onto the grass. Temari picked up a strand of floral fire and demonstrated to Sasuke how to string up the crustaceans and remove the tales and veins with his hands.

"You like shrimp?" She asked. Sasuke shrugged.

"I haven't eaten it in years," he admitted, digging out a slender grey vein from the back of the shrimp. "Orochimaru isn't so fond of sea food."

Temari crinkled her nose in thought. "Orochimaru…that's your guardian, isn't it? What's he like?" She sounded like an old woman, gossiping quietly with her friends. Only, Sasuke wasn't her friend, or at the very least he wasn't sure or not. The pale boy stared off into space.

"He's okay, I guess." He fidgeted with his hair, tucking it behind his ear and casting his eyes down to the pile of shrimp in front of them. He heard Temari grunt but didn't look up, instead placing the shrimp in the pile of 'done shrimp'.

"Just okay?" Temari inquired. Sasuke nodded quickly, reticently, and picked up another shrimp. Rip off the tail, dig out the vein, again and again and again. He could feel her eyes, seeking, searching him, wanting some explanation besides 'fine'. '_Because,_' he thought, '_everything is fine. No matter what it is._'

"Just okay."

He heard Temari sigh beside him. "Whatever you say, darlin'." She set to work again, methodically preparing the shrimp with precision and accuracy. Sasuke looked over the tiny animal in his hands, turning it back and forth in his palm. The tail went first, cast away before the veins and the minute legs. '_Small and helpless_,' he thought. '_They're small and helpless._' How miserable it must have been being caught in a net and then drowned in the air. '_I drown in air,_' Sasuke thought. '_Ever day I breathe._'

"You done with that shrimp? You've been holding it for a couple of minutes now." Temari leaned over and took the shrimp from Sasuke's pale, limp fingers and finished it off herself. "You okay love? You don't look too good."

Sasuke shook his head. "I'm fine." He glanced up to meet Temari's gaze for the first time in ages and ages. Concern and guilt met him. "Really." He resumed his work. The shrimp felt cold in his hands. '_A lie,_' he decided, '_I'm not fine. But I'll never be fine._'

They finished in silence. Sasuke more than Temari, if only because she worked quicker, deft hands that had clearly done this a hundred times before. Sasuke was too clumsy for such work really, but Temari never commented on his inability. A different side of her exposed itself: concerned and gentle. It reminded Sasuke, in some way, of his mother.

"We shall feast tonight," she laughed. "On shrimp and fish and mangoes and peanuts!" She smiled. "Did you want a package of those, actually? Who cares if it throws Neji and his perfectly-counted-rationing into a fit? You must be hungry." Sasuke shook his head reticently and picked at the edge of his shirt. Shrugging, Temari gathered the de-veined shrimp into the bottom of her blouse, stood, and offered Sasuke her unoccupied hand. "Come on, don't just sit there."

Carefully, Sasuke took the blond girl's hand and hoisted himself to his feet. Took more effort than he remembered. He followed her to the 'food-storage-facility', as it had been named by an agitated and formal Neji, and watched as she placed the shrimp on long strands of floral wire. There she was, graceful all over again with this task.

"Do you string a lot of shrimp?" Sasuke asked. He sealed his mouth shut with his lips instinctively. He never talked much, and not about something so trivial. Not to Temari, especially.

Temari shrugged. "Kind of. My mother died when Gaara was born and dad didn't take it so well," she stepped out of the store room and rolled the log over the entrance again, "and he kind of avoided us, you know? I learned to cook pretty fast." She laughed a short rueful, laugh. "And you? You look like you've never cooked a day in your life."

"I have, just not that kind of cooking."

"Oh, what kind of cooking?" Temari raised an eyebrow and started for the south end of the island, "we need to get our clothes washed," she explained in reply to Sasuke's blank look.

"Pasta," Sasuke said. "And every kind of frozen dinner imaginable."

"Orochimaru not so much for gourmet?"

Sasuke shrugged. "Not really." They fell into a comfortable silence, and in it, they offered up a piece of themselves without saying anything. It was all inferred in their breath, in their stance, and neither of them had to do anything, say anything, but the other knew.

Or at least, Sasuke knew, and he figured since Temari was a million times better at reading people than he was that she must know too.

Neither said anything, not until they reached the shallow stream where Haku had set about washing clothing. Awkward bodies stood in a semi-circle, except Sai, because had been set apart for making 'disrespectful comments' towards 'Kiba's man junk, right?' Leave it to Temari.

She joined in on the laughter emitting from everyone except Kiba. At the sight of the hotly pouting boy, Sasuke found a short, dry laugh escaping from his lips too. Soulless, mirthless, maybe, but he figured it was something. He eyed the water uncomfortably. '_I'd rather keep my clothes on, thanks._' Temari bade them farewell with a wink and a nod in the general direction of Haku, who was the only boy besides Sasuke who had his clothes on.

"Come on, Uchiha, shed it…" Kiba urged. "Stop being such a girl. Isn't it worse to reek?" It sounded almost Shakespearean back there.

Sasuke tossed the shirt over his head, cautiously handing it to Haku, who rolled his eyes at Sasuke's discomfort. "Oh please," the androgen chided. "It's just us guys…" He shook his head in exasperation. "Go. Flee. Scatter."

It was better without his clothes anyway, Sasuke decided, even if everyone could see everything… The sun was baking down in strands, hot and scalding. Heat rose from the sand in waves. "Hey," Kiba talking again, "you're all burned up Uchiha." Those weren't the only flaws…there were scars too, scars Sasuke had long ago memorized.  
'_Why are you looking?_' Sasuke almost snapped. "I'm aware." He glanced down at his arms. Itchy and dry where they were burned, just-dry every where else. He hated that. That's why there was lotion. For dry skin. Which Sasuke had.

Only he didn't have any lotion.

Stupid sun.

* * *

_The violin. Like the violin. Everything was so fucking high strung, everywhere and nowhere all at once. People were running, only they were running backwards and Sasuke found himself, running backwards too. He glanced behind him, in front of him, and there he was, running backwards a little too close for comfort, Orochimaru-the-root-of-evil._

_Someone ran beside him too, no, hundred did…no…only one. Sasuke turned to stare at them and they turned to stare back. "What's going on?" he called, but it didn't come out like it should have, didn't escape his mouth like words. _

_A ripple of sound emitted from the mouth of the 15-teenaged girl running near him, beside him, to the same fate as him. It sounded strange, running back and back and…_

_He couldn't understand a word she was saying, screaming. He couldn't understand the music playing from nowhere and he couldn't understand the scenery because above him was the ground and the sky was underneath his feet and he was so fucking confused it didn't make sense._

_Again, he tried to shriek something out because running, he couldn't stop running and he swore Orochimaru was gaining on them, him and the other dozen people that kept multiplying, multiplying, until they were everywhere and then…_

_He was alone in a sea of black._

_And then Itachi was there, and he was leering like he was ready to kill him and Sasuke scooted back until he swore he hit a wall but there was nothing there, no wall only black and it was all in his head. He wanted to disappear so badly (__The light concealing cream goes on first. Then you blend, and blend, and blend. Blending is the secret.__His brother the skeleton, white and conniving and alwayssocharistmaticeveryoneloveshim. Itachi reached forward, and his hands were like scissors__ and not hands and Sasuke could feel them at his throat, slicing, slicing, blades of ice and fire at once, draining away his red-life into the black-dark while Itachi laughed and laughed and laughed and--_

_And Mozart played backwards._

* * *

"Sasuke," Naruto shook the dark haired boy cautiously. Sasuke scooted away. "Sasuke, wake up." 

"What's going on?" Sai propped himself up on an elbow. "Is he alright?"

"Go get Sakura, okay? She volunteers at the hospital on weekends. And Temari too." Naruto could feel panic in his throat. The past five minutes he had been trying to calm down a completely ballistic Sasuke armed with nothing to go on. Nothing. '_Were you supposed to wake people having nightmares up? Or are you supposed to let them scream it out?_' He couldn't remember, but he remembered someone telling him it was deathly important one way or the other.

He just couldn't remember which way or the other.

Sai crawled from the yurt and left Naruto alone in the dark with the feverish, screaming teenager. '_Feverish?_' Naruto questioned himself when that particular description came to mind. He knit his eyebrows together unconsciously. "Sasuke?" Screw letting him sleep. "Sasuke, wake up."

Sasuke's eyes snapped open. They were wild, animalistic with dreaming induced rage, but they did clear as the dark haired boy stared up into the black. He wriggled away from Naruto instinctively with nothing more than a cold, 'let me alone, Uzumaki'. Naruto shook his head. They weren't friends, not by any stretch of the imagination, but it was damned obvious that Sasuke needed someone to be concerned about him.

This was thoroughly interrupted when Temari and Hinata crawled into the yurt, burning stick aloft. Temari relit the fire in the center of the fire-pit. "What's wrong?" she asked. "Something had better be wrong, because I was just-- Uchiha, what's wrong with you?"

Sasuke struggled to sit up, pressing his back against the drift-wood wall. "Nothing. Headache." The look he sent Naruto and Sai was clear: 'don't say anything'. And neither of them did. Sakura had suspicions on her own though.

"Liar," she replied curtly. "You look like you just went through torture: you're shaking like leaf, your skin is redder than a boiled lobster, you're hyperventilating…" She trailed off. "Did you drink enough water today Sasuke?"

Sasuke nodded immediately. "Yes."

Temari raised an eyebrow. "I was with you most of the day," she replied, stifling a yawn. "I didn't see you drink anything." One blond eyebrow arched high above her slate-grey eyes. "You sure? If you're sick, we can help you. If you don't tell us…you remember what happened last time, don't you?"

Naruto sure as hell remembered. Leg cramps aren't forgotten so easily. Neither are soaking wet teenaged boys clinging for dear life, for that matter.

"I didn't have anything to drink after that water you gave me this morning," he admitted. Sakura made a 'hmm' noise.

"Dehydration," she said finally. "All the classic signs. Getting bad, too, yes." She narrowed her eyes. "Are you sunburned?"

Sasuke nodded miserably. He looked small, Naruto decided. He looked like that a lot. '_So much for the Uchiha pride, huh?_'

"Then you might be at risk for heat-stroke. Take a bath or something tomorrow. It should cool you down, since your burn will affect how you sweat, assuming you sweat at all. Dehydration, definitely. You're thirsty, right?"

Sasuke shrugged. "A little."

Temari snorted. "A little means a lot. Naruto, go take this," she handed him one of the hallowed out coconuts that every yurt was equipped with, "and get Uchiha some water." Naruto nodded and crawled out of the shelter.

The nighttime was pretty cold, actually, despite how hot the days were. Stumbling blindly across the clearing, Naruto found the pool of water (not Alkaline) and filled up the half coconut. He stumbled back, spilling frigid liquid over his hands awkwardly. All his movements seemed awkward. '_Leave it to Uchiha to interrupt a good night's sleep. Because he worked sooooo hard today._'

"Drink this slowly," Temari ordered, handing the water to Sasuke. "In the morning, drink at least five times this much. Sai, you're in charge of making sure he does that. Got it?"

"Can we sleep now?" Naruto demanded, stifling another yawn.

"I am there with you brother man."

"Same."

"Okay, then we're going back to the girls' yurt. Unless there is blood, fire, or chocolate, do not disturb us again." And then they were gone. Sasuke still sat against one of the walls, drinking the water slowly.

"Good night to the both of you," Sai said, "I'll be seeing you in the morning."

And after Sai was asleep, it was just Sasuke and Naruto, awake. As much as he wanted to pretend he wasn't worried about the other boy's mental health, Naruto was kind of worried. Sasuke had always struck him as enigmatic, even when they were in junior high together. Honesty had never been part of the Uchiha's school of thought. Or, if it wasn't dishonesty, just a find blend of understatements, half-truths, and words left unsaid.

And silence. That too.

"What did you dream about?" Naruto asked abruptly. He had never been really good with words. He wasn't as articulate as, say, Shikamaru and not as smooth as Neji. He was awkward and honest and worried, because even if he wasn't friends with Uchiha Sasuke, they were stuck on the same desert island. If they didn't look out for each other, who would?

"Excuse me?" Sasuke's eyes grew dark, closed.

"Your dream. You were freaking out and stuff, so I assumed--"

"Don't."

And that was the end of that.

* * *

**It seems like filler, but it has purpose. **

**Rawr...my 100th review was anonymous, but regular, so Taloose...email me about this. Because your ever-so-small cameo in this sucked. It needs to be better. Honestly.  
**


	8. Mood: Morbid

**I'm sorry for no update yesterday and such a late, short one today...I had a really important paper on HIV/AIDS in Tanzania due and I had to finish. Please forgive me, I didn't think it would take me so long.**

**I. Don't. Own. This. (And OMGEH! It's building up! The...well, the GaaNeji, actually. The SasuNaru is like bait so you won't run off so soon ::pseudo-sadist::)**

* * *

The next day, Sasuke busied himself with helping build the famed 'raft'. It wasn't easy work but it was light, just tedious. It was something he could do without killing himself. He still felt fairly sick, weak, headache-y, but that was so expected it wasn't even surprising. At least the wood didn't chafe his cut up hands too badly. 

"Drink," Sai ordered from the bushes. Sasuke jumped. Just a little. On the inside.

"Have you been sitting there watching me?" It wasn't like he cared. Not really.

"Maybe."

"Oh. Okay." Whatever it took to get Sai to leave him alone. He was kind of…

Well he was creepy. How much plainer can you get? Sai was downright creepy. There is no deeper motive, no greater explanation than that. Sai was just creepy. Sasuke kept working. He was all alone in the wide clearing, binding together the wood and seat cushions with…

Well we know what he was doing it with, don't we? Must we reiterate the omnipotent floral wire? And why has the fourth wall suddenly disappeared? What are we, a badly written sprite comic?

Sasuke shook his head to clear the voices from it. Lovely creatures, sometimes, but they could be desperately annoying, especially with their constant and useless chatter.

But he was lonely, so he figured they could stay there. He wasn't_crazy_, just…

Nope, he was crazy.

'_It's just the dehydration talking,_' he scolded himself. '_Just the heat._'

It was to be expected, really. Growing up, Sasuke had never really had friends…sure he had admirers, girls who liked him because they thought he was handsome and mysterious, and he had rivals, boys who threatened him on a regular basis. He wasn't mysterious though, just dishonest and introverted. Fighting was a different matter, and that had given him some kind of human contact, even if it was the rough, violent kind. It wasn't abusive because he could hold his own against it, and it wasn't particularly malicious because he was Uchiha-Fucking-Sasuke and it was okay to fight with him and at the end of the day, you didn't really hate him.

If they knew the half of it, at the end of the day all they would feel was pity. And Sasuke didn't want pity, not in any way. So it continued: he fought with the boys and the girls kept on thinking he was some kind of beautiful enigma. Of course, the girls who got close enough to him to really try and understand him, the few he had let into his barrier of silence, soon discovered what he really was: a lying, cheating, fearful child.

How pathetic.

But they had stayed anyway. Even if he avoided her a bit, and rarely confided in her, Sasuke felt he could consider Sakura a friend. Or, if not a friend, at the very least a confidant. It was good to have someone he could talk to. Maybe not trust, but talk to.

It was good to have someone to talk to, that was all.

"Hey, Uchiha."

Sasuke glanced up. No one sounded that chipper in the middle of the heat.

"What do you want, Uzumaki?" The pale boy sat back on his knees and stared up at the very tanned, very shirtless teenager in front of him.

"Did you need help?"

"No." It was best, Sasuke decided, not to get too involved with anyone.

"Well I'm going to help anyway. Interesting use of the…float-y cushions." Naruto laughed and plopped down on the dirt beside Sasuke. "You might want to try and secure them better. It looks…"

"Like a giant couch," Sasuke supplied.

"With…extra wood?" Naruto raised an eyebrow. "I mean…the logs are just there…no real reason. Aren't they a bit heavy?"

"Probably."

"We should take them off. They look retarded."

Sasuke raised an eyebrow. _'There is no we,_' he thought. '_At least, there wasn't…_' He shrugged. "Whatever you think."

"Hey," Naruto held up his hands defensively. "You're the one with the A in physics. Hell, you're the one in physics, because I'm still in biology and we don't learn shit." He rubbed the back of his neck nervously or maybe, maybe it was just the sun.

But maybe it wasn't.

"Just seat cushions might not hold the raft up," Sasuke countered. "If we can make the raft float without them, they just add buoyancy."

"Look," Naruto leaned closer to Sasuke. "I am completely useless in this department. You just tell me what I need to do, I'll string it together. How are your hands by the way?" The blond boy snatched his peer's right hand to examine it.

Sasuke flinched. No one ever showed any concern and frankly, he didn't feel he deserved it. He let the blond boy look his palms over for long than he had meant to before shaking him off. "Don't touch," he growled, albeit without the usual venom. Naruto shrugged.

"They look good. Mine are almost healed though, see?" He held out his hands for Sasuke to see. Without meaning to, the Uchiha leaned forward to stare at the other teenager's fingers and palms. Indeed, what had been bleeding scratches a week before had subsided into a few scabs but mostly a network of pale scars.

Sasuke nodded vaguely. Part of him wanted to touch the scars, but he decided that part of him was part sadomasochist so he didn't. Naruto withdrew his hands and rested them on his exposed knees, apparently waiting for instruction. '_That stupid grin,_' Sasuke muttered in his head. "You should weave floral wire into the cloth coating of the seat. Can you sew?"

Naruto nodded. "Yeah." This earned him a strange look from the dark haired boy. "What? It came out of necessity. I've pretty much been on my own forever. What stitch?"

Sasuke hadn't really been aware there were different names for different stitches. Mostly he did what worked, since no one had ever taught him how to mend. Thank god for books and internets. "The one where you go in and around instead of in and out." Sasuke demonstrated, pushing the floral wire through the tough cloth cover of the floatation device.

"Whip stitch," Naruto said offhandedly. "It's useful for sewing stuff back together. Yeah, I get it. Hand me that surprisingly flamboyant looking pillow."

From there on, they worked in silence. Sasuke surveyed Naruto's handy work carefully, testing the stitches reticently, wordlessly lifting logs and attempting to gauge if they would float or not. The design seemed solid enough, but honestly who could trust a design scratched in the sand by a nearly asleep high school senior? It was gone with the tide…for all Sasuke knew, he remembered it wrong.

Not that he would ever admit to remembering something like that wrong. Besides, if that was the case, he could always blame it on Naruto. It was simple as that.

Of course, knowing the people he was stuck with, they would side with Naruto.

'_I wouldn't be surprised,_' he thought, '_I would probably side with Naruto too._'

Heck, people would side with a burglar over him. 'Oh he was just borrowing it,' they would say. 'Stop being so accusatory Sasuke! God, girly-man!' At this point, Sasuke was sure it was the heat again. No way he was this irrational. He decided the little voices in his head were merely auditory hallucinations induced by lack of water.

"I'm going to get a drink," he announced.

"I'll come with you," Naruto blurted. Sasuke raised an eyebrow. "I should drink too." The blond boy stood. "Come on, don't look that way."

"Temari sent you to spy on me, didn't she?" Great, he was turning paranoid. That was not such a great turn of events. Just a drink, he'd probably feel better. Besides, he was trapped on an island with people who hated him.

He had a right to lose it just a little bit.

* * *

"Does it…" 

"It…"

"Actually…"

"Floats."

"You know," Naruto said, picking at his cuticle, "you guys are creepy when you finish each other's sentences. No, scratch that, you guys are creepy all the time, this just makes you even more creepy. And that takes a lot."

Neji and Gaara made growly faces.

"What? It's true."

"It is true," Kiba piped up. Gaara made a bigger growly face and the dog-lover immediately became small. "But…I mean, dude, your raft floats!" Indeed, even boasting a couple hundred pounds in the form of Ino and Sakura, the raft was floating on the end of a long piece of floral wire holding it back from the sea.

"It's Uchiha's raft. He told me what to do, I just used my mad sewing skillz0rz."

Sasuke's ears pricked up at that. He hadn't expected Naruto to give him any real credit, but then again, he rarely thought anything but hateful, impure thoughts towards the world. Impure by whose standards?

The world's, apparently.

"Well…that kind of makes sense. I didn't think you quite had the ability to make this thing float on it's own." Temari talking. "Then again, it takes a super genius to convince something made out of wood and wire and coconuts and floaty cushions to float. I guess it's true, two heads are better than one." She turned away from the beach. "Kudos you guys. You ready to salvage a graveyard?"

'_No,_' Sasuke thought. _'No I'm not._' But it wasn't him destined to go this time around.

Naruto and Temari ended up going. It was probably because Temari knew where she was going, being that strange child she was, and Naruto because he could swim well and probably harder than Haku. Not that Haku minded, since he had been put in charge of feeding a group of angry, rather tired castaways while the Leader was away.

Sasuke sat alone. Everyone else talked amongst themselves: Neji and Gaara, Kiba and Hinata, Haku and Zaubza, Ino and Sakura, Sai and Shino, Kankuro and Shikamaru...they paired off and chatted about whatever came to mind (or, you know, pestered each other until there was some serious throat throttling).

But Sasuke was alone.

And he supposed it was better that way.

When they returned, Naruto and Temari had gone silent and somber. They passed off the treasure: two first aid kits, way too many packages of peanuts, various condiments in environmentally unconscious packaging, and a necklace.

"Where did that come from?" Hinata whispered. Not a question, not really, because she knew where that had come from.

"It was in his hand," Naruto muttered softly. "Kurenai will want it back." He pressed it into the girl's hands. She blinked at it, white eyed, and then to him.

"She…she won't know for a while…"

Sasuke's mind was churning. People had stepped back from the two, watching the exchange somberly. "Whose necklace?" he wondered.

Apparently aloud.

"Kurenai's," Temari whispered. "She gave it to Asuma maybe a month ago…since Asuma obviously isn't here and Naruto obviously picked it up from between the seats or something…" She trailed off and took another deep breath. "Naruto will have something to tell Kurenai. That Asuma was thinking of her in his last moments, that he pressed the necklace into Hinata's hand and told her to tell Kurenai he loved her."

"That's a lie though."

"For someone so dishonest…you sure miss the point of it."

* * *

**I hate this stretch...seems really long to me...but it's all part of intregal character development. **

**::lacking in t3h sleep department:: **


	9. Mood: Sadomasochistic

**In which Gaara is a creepy fuck and Sasuke is secretly asking for it.**

**Because I got sick of the dynamic I had created (but don't own). So I decided to shake it up a little. Also, I felt I was being boring. Therefore, it's time to give Sasuke yet another medical malady! Yay! Don't worry...um...it shall lead to pseudo-SasuNaru-fluffies? And probably some sort of Gaara-Neji fluffies. Hell, let's throw in some bunny fluffies. **

**Because those are better. **

* * *

"But what is the meaning of life?" 

Fourteen simultaneous sighs. Well, actually, ten sighs, three eye rolls, and two 'hn' noises. "Temari," Kiba spoke up, "this is isn't helping anyone, it's just pissing people off. I mean, we finally get the day off and all you can do is try and force us to do 'team-building exercises'? Come on…"

Temari rolled her eyes. "Fine. Fine. You know what? I am going into my yurt. I'm not coming out unless there is blood, fire, or a plane coming to rescue us. Or something. Do they even know we're missing? Of course not, we're insignificant little fucks…"

And then she was gone.

"Productive," Kiba drawled. Gaara leaned back on his palms in the sand. He couldn't blame his sister: surely she was at her wits end. A high school senior, no matter how level-headed and brilliant, is still a high school senior and completely unprepared to try and keep a community together.

"Is your sister okay?" Neji.

Ah, Neji. Nice boy really. A little docile though. Gaara smiled savagely. '_Docile is cute._' There could be great lengths to which this could be analyzed, so Gaara merely figured he would tell it like it was: gender was a non-issue. It was all about the personality.

And the masochism.

Sure. Let's go with that one. Gaara crossed his hands over his ankles, sitting cross-legged on the beach. "My sister is never okay," he said shortly. There was more that could be said, maybe, much more, but not to Neji and not now.

"I'm sorry."

"No, that's good. If she were okay, she would be in denial." Gaara set about picking at the fraying edges of his jeans. They weren't even his jeans, they were technically Temari's jeans. The red-head found that they fit better. Or maybe it was because it pissed the girl off and that made him smile.

On the inside.

"We should," Gaara stretched out, towards Neji in a clear invasion of personal space, "we should explore." There were so many ways that that could be taken it made Gaara's feet tingle. His feet always tingled when he was feeling deliciously sadistic.

And boy, was he feeling deliciously sadistic. Exploring the jungle is not necessarily directly correlated to exploring _in _the jungle. There is a difference, really. One involves actually looking at plants and animals and learning stuff you'll never need when you're_ stocking the frozen food aisle_, and one involved flirtation, making out, and fuck-age.

Who gives if that's not a word?

Not Gaara. His mind branched off on some sort of tangent. '_Cute,_' he decided, eying Neji in a blank way that probably looked more like 'I want to kill you' than 'I want to kiss you', even though they're not that far apart. Even in Japanese. To kill is 'korosu' and to kiss is…

Okay, so they're not that far off in English.

"I'd rather not," Neji drawled. "I'd rather take a nap. All this stupid budget-balance is making my head hurt." He wrinkled his nose. "I mean really."

"Come on…" Gaara was all for invading personal space. Why not? It wasn't like there was much to do anyway. It was officially 'wait-for-the-fish-to-steam' day. "We should have…fun…" Gaara could feel Neji's breath on his face, panicked and ragged. The red-headed boy placed his hands firmly on the older boy's shoulders and pushed him backwards--

"What the hell are you doing?" Neji demanded, shaking Gaara off. No easy task mind you. "Get off me, you lunatic!"

"I'm the lunatic?" Gaara sat awkwardly on his knees, staring up at a fuming Neji. "At least I don't go around trying to kill…people…bad example…"

"Yeah, bad example you f-f-fa…fa…" There was some kind derogatory sexuality-based insult contained in the stuttering, but Gaara wasn't motivated enough to try and find it.

"Oh please, at least I wear the kind of make up you can see. None of that concealer shit for me." Gaara glared. "My skin is naturally this decent, you stupid fuck. I don't go around trying to hide acne, I just don't get it because I don't eat fatty disgusting foods all the time like you do, fatty." Gaara had to admit that was pretty junior-high, and definitely a bit long winded, but whatever worked. If it was stupid, but hurtful, than it couldn't be that hurtful.

Neji looked mortified.

"What?" Gaara snapped. "You didn't think anyone would notice that you've suddenly got acne you didn't have before? Stop being such a girl, or go hang around with Uchiha. You two can compare hair products or something. Yours is looking pretty disgusting over there, Hyuuga." He bared his teeth for emphasis, always the terrifying one. His eyeliner was still intact, mostly because it was perpetually in his pocket and not in carry-on like some idiots.

"Shut up," Neji hissed. The words sounded foreign coming from someone so uptight. '_Must be the heat._' Gaara knew heat bred insanity…he had grown up in Suna. Who doesn't know that? Neji was seething, but looking more hurt than mad. Some part of Gaara told him he should stop, cease fire, that if Neji wasn't interested, Neji just wasn't interested.

Gaara promptly told that part of himself to shove it and went right ahead with hassling the other teenager. Being bitter to the world usually worked fine enough for Gaara, but sometimes…he needed to kill something. Anything. Sometimes, killing a persons spirit would do well enough for him.

"Oh, stop your whining. You're just insecure."

"I'm not!" Neji shrieked. Gaara could see the sweat forming on Neji's forehead and the frustration entering the blank canvas of his eyes. Gaara smiled crookedly somewhere inside himself. So much pent up rage…he had been stuck on this island for more than and week and he felt so angry…or not angry, just…vengeful. Vengeful for everything. He had to blame someone for something.

Neji was convenient and easy to toy with.

"I think you are. I think there's a reason you've never dated a girl. I think you're so far in the fucking closet, you eat mothballs for breakfast." Gaara would be the first to admit that was a horrible insult, but effective. Effective because Neji was staring up at his with white, frightened eyes and trembling lips and breath that came in bursts. '_That's enough,_' Gaara decided. '_At least for now._'

And Gaara stood, flung a handful of sand in the air, and walked away. '_Yes,_' he mused, '_cute_.'

* * *

Sasuke hated the water. 

He honestly did.

That didn't matter that the moment, however, because his back was burnt so badly that there were blisters visible through his shirt and his body was so amazingly hot that the only thing that made sense to do was submerge himself in the cool water of the ocean. It would have to do, since they didn't really have air conditioning in the middle of an uncharted island.

So he sat in the ocean. Only the shallow part, where he wouldn't drown, but it was the ocean. Out of necessity is born something useful and nerve-wracking at once. At least, sometimes.

Sasuke shook his head to clear it. '_What the hell am I saying?_' he asked. It didn't make any sense to him either. '_It's the heat._' Of course he could blame it on the heat. He could blame anything he wanted on the heat. His could blame how his head ached and his body felt weak and achy.

He leaned over the threw up into the water. The tide carried the remnants of fish and peanuts out into the body of water, leaving Sasuke feeling sick to his stomach. '_What the hell? Really? Can't I just be not sick for like, a couple of day?_' That was sort of unlikely, considering he hadn't had much contact with diseases in his life and the ones he had come in contact with never seemed to lessen. Colds used to knock him out for days at a time, letting up long enough for him to go to school a few days and be put out again with some kind of physical malady.

Some call it 'child abuse', Sasuke called it 'That Which Never Happened'.

He was sure some part of that would be analyzed, but that was irrelevant. No one knew, no one needed to know. He stood up awkwardly and splashed through the water. '_I must smell like shit,_' he thought. The thoughts were foreign…banal enough to shock his system.

"Hey, are you okay?"

It was the Uzumaki boy again. '_Does he ever leave me alone?_' Of course not. "What do you want?"

"Um…I want to know if you're okay? Duh, Uchiha." The blond boy was closer than Sasuke wished he was. "You look kind of pale. Then again, you're always pale." Still too close. Sasuke wanted to be alone. Being sick alone is better than being sick with people watching.

Unfortunately, Sasuke's stomach had other ideas. He dropped onto the sand and heaved up whatever happened to be still left in his gut. He didn't dare looks up at Naruto, whom he fully expected to turn around and leave him there.

Because that was completely what he would have done. If their roles had been reversed, he would have left the blond boy to his own devices on the beach, trembling with chills and miserable, miserable puking. Dry heaving. Whatever. He wouldn't have stuck around that long.

That's nasty.

Sasuke flinched when he felt someone touch his back. "Would it be insensitive for me to tell you that you don't appear to be fine?"

Sasuke nodded weakly and sat back, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. "Very." His eyes were burning…stupid sun…

"Come on." Naruto stood and hoisted Sasuke up with surprising gentleness. He snaked a tanned arm around Sasuke's waist and tugged the pale boy's body against his hip. "You should lie down." Sasuke felt like struggling but didn't. '_Am I supposed to pull away?_' It had been a basic rule in his early childhood that even when an Uchiha is sick, they care for themselves and Orochimaru had never given a flying fuck about him.

No one had ever even pretended to care. So Naruto pretending to care now was a refreshing change. He leaned against the younger boy's hip, relaxing his muscles one by one. It felt good to stop, relax, cease trying to hold up. Ever since that damned lay-over in God Knows Where, he had been feeling kind of rotten. Why the hell did they lay over anywhere? It was the ocean! There was no where to land! But no, the plane needed to go a million miles out of its way to refuel. Why couldn't they refuel in Hawaii instead of Nowhere Land, Indonesia?

This sucked.

"I'm cold," he complained once he sat opposite Naruto in their yurt, even if it was partially Sai's. He is irrelevant. Like a semicolon. Even with the fire going, the dark-haired boy could feel deep chills in his body.

"It's really hot out," Naruto countered. "How can you be cold?"

Sasuke rolled his eyes. "It's called a fever, dumb shit."

"Hey, I carried you back from the beach. No insulting me."

Sakura crawled inside, interrupting Sasuke's retort. "Hey, you guys, Temari sent me to check on Sasuke, since she's angsting and not talking to anyone. Sasuke, what's going on? Are you just perpetually sick?"

"It's karma," called a voice from outside in a very thick Russian accent, even if it was a Russian accent that sounded a lot like Kiba trying to fake a Russian accent.

"Yes, it probably is, Desya Fakenamegoeshereakov," Sakura called back, "now shut it." She turned her green eyes back on Sasuke. "Symptoms? This looks like the flu, but then again…" She rubbed her tapered chin and eyed Sasuke strangely. "It's hot in here…do you feel cold?"

Sasuke nodded.

"Aching?"

"Everywhere?"

"Are you itchy? Like…rash?"

Sasuke nodded and held out his arm. There were a couple of bumps there, angry from itching and sunburn. Sakura poked one and he jerked his arm away. "That hurt!" He cried without meaning to. His brain was too fuzzy to actually think in coherent sentences.

"Did you take Malaria meds before you left?"

No.

He hadn't.

But…that was stupid.

"Did you?" he countered.

To his surprise, Sakura nodded. "Yeah, my parents were being really paranoid and stuff. They went insane when they found out the plane was stopping in Indonesia. Whatever." She shrugged. "What about you Naruto?"

Naruto nodded. "Yeah…my guardian is totally insane about that too. Not you, huh Sasuke?" Sasuke glanced up at his peers. He had found a fairly warm position, pressed against Naruto's side and the wall of the hut-yurt-shelter-alternative-living-environment. Instead of replying, he just shook his head. "That sucks. Go ask around and see who else took meds. Not that I'm even mostly sure it's malaria, but that's on the table right now."

And then she was gone. Sasuke was glad there was one last person to pretend to be concerned for him, one less pair of eyes watching him. He shivered again, wrapping his arms around his body to try and trap in the heat. What a futile attempt.

"Hey, come here." Sasuke sat up wearily and moved closer to Naruto. Taking the slighter boy in his arms, Naruto jostled Sasuke carefully, dragging him in a sort of cuddle (only men can't call it cuddling because that's not manly). "Here, better?" The blond boy's body radiated heat, something Sasuke welcomed wholeheartedly. His brain was fuzzy, his mind was swimming, but at least he was slightly more comfortable than he had been thirty seconds ago.

Sasuke nodded distantly. The hug-type-thing was, indeed warmer. He felt better. '_This is stupid._'

"Naruto?"

"Yeah?"

"Why are you being nice?"

"Shut up and get hugged."

* * *

**Yeah…well…it had nothing to do with literal Sadomasochism at all, but I don't care (symbolism? Yes? No? Phail?). I hated Gaara's part, but I needed to establish that being verbally abusive is the equivalent of him killing people, since that's…you know, illegal. Hence, Gaara doesn't have a lot of friends.**

**It's moving along. Slowly, but it's moving. Once we get to the violence/near-death/hallucinations, things will pick up. ::likes all of those things more than she should:: **


	10. Mood: Vaguely Surprising

**I'm sorry for the influx of typos in the past few chapters…I've been a bit stressed getting back to school and my proofreading skills died. It shall improve, I swears-es. Also, two chapters today, just because I didn't update yesterday (fanfiction went out on me). This is a little short, but there's more later.**

* * *

"Hey, small child, we brought food! Naruto, come out here and get food." Temari was one of the people who hadn't gotten Malaria medications and as such, was bossy from a great distance. Basically, the only people who were actually innoculized were Naruto, Kiba and Sakura, so there was major quarantine on the smaller clearing, where there had been a really small driftwood pseudo-shelter. Ooh. Pseudo word of the weak.

"Can we have jalapeño poppers for breakfast?"

Naruto pulled the food into the shelter. "Sasuke, you're bloody insane. Or hallucinating. Or, you know, both. Here, eat this." Somehow, he had ended up as primary caregiver of Sasuke, since Sakura and Kiba were busy dragging large pieces of wood to absolutely nowhere. Or, at least it wasn't in the shelter, so it was nowhere to Sasuke.

"If you don't eat, you will die."

Temari had instructed Naruto that this was a very effective way of getting people to obey you at all costs, because they are easily controllable when sick and no one seems to notice this. For all we know, the germ warfare is actually propaganda from the government.

Our government (your government, the Federation of Allied Planets) and not terrorists.

Even if the definition of that word is totally debatable.

Sasuke refused the food. "Here, sit up." Naruto pulled Sasuke up to a sitting position. "You need to soak in water," he said quietly. "You're really hot." Indeed, the Uchiha's skin burned with fever. "Water too. Come on."

Day a million. Or day three. Or day one. Naruto wasn't really sure anymore. He helped Sasuke out of the quarantine shelter of d00m and towards the river. Yes, someone finally realized there was a river. Could you blame them? The island was huge.

Carefully, Sasuke curled up in the water. He looked small, still in the liquid of life, eyes shut and body shaking. "I'm cold," he whispered softly. "Cold…cold…Uzumaki, aren't you cold too?" Delirium had set in, Naruto figured, mostly by way of analyzing the way Sasuke's words had just reduced themselves to nothing, strings of nonsensical sounds.

Word salad, if you will.

Why was it his job now? What had he done to suddenly become the babysitter for Uchiha-fucking-Sasuke? Oh, now he remembered, he took a certain brand of medication. It was like isolation caused by fate for no real reason and it made him really, really mad. He narrowed his eyes and leaned against a tree, watching Sasuke intently. He was pretty, Naruto conceded, but pathetic. Letting him sit in a river was probably not the smartest thing in the world, but it was close enough to the beach that no one would be drinking the water downstream for a while.

Of course, for all Naruto knew it would kill off all of them, but hey, it wouldn't be his fault.

Well, it would be, but no one would care anyway because they would all be dead and no one would ever know the difference because they were stuck in the middle of bloody nowhere. Which is like the middle of non-bloody nowhere, only, you know…

Not bloody?

Naruto was pretty sure he was still lucid. It was probably just the fact that he was a teenager with some serious issues (on island, issues are part of the package) and that was why his mind was running amuck. Honestly. It was getting annoying.

But then again, everything was annoying. Mostly the fact that this entire thing was like a soap opera.

"You know," Naruto said aloud, "I don't believe in god, I merely subscribe to the idea that we are all characters in a massive game of The Sims. And you know what, oh worldly one who controls everything about my life? You know what? Screw you! It's all your fault!"

Poor dear, really.

"You know what else? Be nicer to Sasuke. Could you maybe stop picking on him? He never did anything to you." The blond boy crossed his arms. "Well there goes the fourth wall…or part of it anyway, since I was basically sitting there talking to myself. Maybe the Sims Player doesn't speak Human?"

His soliloquy was interrupted as Sasuke clunked down beside him on the rock overlooking in the river. "You feeling better?" It was his job, whether he wanted it or not, to make sure the dark haired boy turned our okay. He couldn't help but feel bad though: Sasuke's skin was thin and paper white, his glossy black hair dulled with thickness and sweat.

"Not really," Sasuke murmured. "Why the hell is it you? It's a fucking conspiracy. Shit, I want a smoke." Naruto wasn't sure he knew Sasuke smoke, or if Sasuke actually smoked, or whether the black haired boy was just muttered whatever came to mind.

"Do you smoke?" Logical question.

Sasuke nodded. "That I do. Too much, probably." His eyes shut gently and the wind off the ocean flickered through his hair. "Hence I said I wanted a cigarette." He bit his lip and leaned against the rock. His eyes were closed in slightly tormented rest. "It's stupid here. I hate it."

"Sucks that we're here," Naruto replied. "Are you--"

"All there? Unfortunately. I'm fully aware of your fucking annoying voice. If I tune you out, I did it on purpose." He shrugged. "I figure this is going to get a lot worse pretty soon, assuming it can actually get worse since I'm been puking up my guts since yesterday." He examined his hands carefully. "Here is better than the alterative."

"Which was?"

Sasuke laughed dryly, a bitter and angry cackle that split the air. He couched a little into his hand, staring over the ocean with a mixture of anger and contempt. "I'm not going to pour my heart out to you Uzumaki just because Temari told you to make sure I don't die." His eyes grew hard in the light. "We're not friends."

"Why the hell would anyone want to be friends with an arrogant prick like you?"

Sasuke shrugged, leaning back against the rock. It felt so good, cool next to his scalding hot skin. "I wouldn't know. I don't have any friends." The short sentences stilled Naruto's voice.

"Oh…"

What else was there to say? You deserve it? Good job Uchiha, you have managed to alienate the entire world. Kudos. You're going to die alone.

Instead, Naruto merely nodded. "I didn't have friends for a long time either." It sounded like a confession, like a dire solution solved by immoral means. "I mean I had Kiba, but we weren't really close until high school. I met Gaara seventh grade…so I guess we were friends…but before that I was sort of alone."

"Being alone isn't so bad."

"It is when you don't have a choice."

Sasuke didn't say anything, choosing to cross his arms and sulk because he hated being sick, but it was pretty clear that he agreed.

* * *

"So, darling, we should go exploring."

Shikamaru blinked. "Um…okay."

Temari grinned. "You don't want to?" She twirled her blond hair between her fingers. She was the queen of 'Exploring the _in_ Jungle', again different to exploring the jungle. Who do you think taught Gaara the difference?

Yeah, well, Temari taught have the world the difference, even if there wasn't a jungle anywhere near there.

Besides, Shikamaru was cute. Like, fuzzy. And intellectually inclined, which was nice since Temari needed a friend who wasn't completely stupid. Not that Kiba was stupid, he just wasn't an intellectual. Shame too, since Shikamaru was so damn hard to find.

Well not really. Look down, find a place with good lighting, and he would eventually show up there. It's actually a cycle.

"Jungle?" Shikamaru raised an eyebrow. "That's not a Ruby Fruit Jungle reference?"

Temari read that book. It was a good book.

"You're not a chick."

Shikamaru sighed. "I should hope not. Fine. Jungle exploration." Temari tapped her lips.

"You know what, I don't like that idea. Come here." She wrapped her arms around Shikamaru's neck. "You like me?" Her eyes were glittering brightly now. "Really truly do you?" She didn't even look like she might be the tiniest bit afraid of rejection. She looked totally confident.

Shikamaru wished he felt the same way.

"Yes," he croaked. What had happened to his voice? This was not a confession of love, this was a confession of 'like', and he was still feeling the tiniest bit sick to his stomach. He didn't _get_ sick to his stomach. It was too much work to feel like that.

"Oh, that's good because I like you too." She closed her eyes part way and peered through her lashes. "You should kiss me." She pressed her mouth against the somewhat shocked teenager's lips. "You're so cute," she muttered, even if it came out 'yukyuk'. Her hands drifted to Shikamaru's hips and took hold of the sides of his khakis. She pushed her tongue insistently between his lips and then--

"Hell yes! I KNEW IT!"

And then Kankuro showed up.

"YOU LIAR! I knew you two were fucking!"

Temari blinked, pulling back from her face. "That's nice. I didn't. Shikamaru's ears went the slightest shade of pink. "Oh well, I know now."

* * *

**There must be more TemaShika. Sometime. Eventually.**


	11. Mood: Awkward

**…I need to get more on track. Honestly. **

**::Hates on life:: I think I'm going to up this to M some time soon, if only because there's a lot of swearing/sexual references (but no actual lemon-ness). Plus it's short because I'm sucking.**

**You know the legalities. Lemme be.**

* * *

"Come here."

"No."

"That was not a request."

Neji glared. "So? Fuck you."

"No, darling, fuck you." Gaara leaned against a palm tree. "You're so uptight. We're on a desert island in the middle of nowhere. We're teenagers. Teenagers fuck each other. Duh." He rolled his eyes. "Come on. I'm bored. You're bored. You don't need to look like someone sodomized you with a banana. It was just an idea." He crossed his arms to sulk.

This bothered Neji. It wasn't like he didn't sort of agree, they were bored and there wasn't so much to do, but he was not interested in having sex with people he barely knew. He voiced such indignantly, glowering at Gaara.

"Then get to know me. It's not like we have anything better to do." The red-headed boy stepped towards his peer. "You have any aversion to that?" Gaara raised an eyebrow.

Neji looked at him for a moment then shrugged, "Okay," he said, looking a bit bored, though he was masking his underlying nervousness. The two boys sat down on the sand and faced each other. "This is awkward," Neji said quietly.

Gaara snorted. "Thanks for stating the obvious. I had no idea. In case you weren't sure, and my explanation hadn't summed it up, I'm not looking for someone to cuddle up with and watch feel-good movies when we get back home. I'm looking for someone I can sleep with. Honestly, the less I know about you, the better. Unfortunately, I barely have any strings attached to you and you're not as picky as Uchiha, so if I need to listen to you talk in order for that to happen, then I'll do it. Even if it's stupid and pointless. But whatever. Talk."

Neji didn't think he had ever heard Gaara talk so much in one sitting.

"I'm Hyuuga Neji and…um…my parents are dead. I live with my uncle and my cousin."

"My parents are dead too. I live with my sister and my brother. I think we already know that."

"I didn't know your parents were dead."

"They are. This conversation sucks. I don't care. The song you wished you had lost your virginity to."

Neji blushed. "I haven't lost it yet."

This was so not part of the 'getting to know each other'.

"Eh. If you were going to lose it while listening to a song, what would it be?" Gaara glowered. Neji shrugged.

"I don't know. You?"

"'Again Again and Again' by Blaqk Audio," Gaara replied instantly. "Even though I actually lost it while listening to 'The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow'." This was met with a strange look. "He had a younger sister, okay? She played shit really loudly and it was annoying."

"Beethoven's fifth."

"What?"

"I'd want to listen to that."

"Honestly?" Gaara raised an eyebrow. Neji nodded. "Why that? It's…"

"Pretty good, actually." The dark haired boy shrugged. "It's just…um…"

"You know what? Forget it. If you want to listen to music that's older than sodomy laws while you lose your virginity, that's fine. Get an iPod though, because you're probably they only one in the world who want to hear that while they're getting sucked off."

"Are you always this crude?"

"Hell no. Just around you. Just because I can." Gaara tapped his foot on the sand. "I'm lacking in social skills here. I don't do conversations. You know why I'm doing it though." The look in his eyes was nearly lecherous. "Fine. Something else about me? Sometimes I fantasize about killing people and the only regret I have about my father's death was that it wasn't me who offed him."

"Why?"

"Because he was abusive to me and my siblings." Gaara cocked a non-existent eyebrow. "Temari wasn't always like that you know. It only started when she was fifteen or so. Before that, she acted pretty normal: generally levelheaded and nice to people who didn't piss her off. Now…" Gaara paused, seeking adjectives to describe his sister, "now she's a freaking psycho. That's okay, because I'm a freaking psycho too. Kankuro turned out the most normal." Gaara grinned a mirthless, sadistic smile. "And you? What makes you the way you are?"

Neji turned away. "I…"

"Oh come off it. Now isn't the time to get all blushing bride on me." This did nothing to stop the red spreading across Neji's pale face. "Just spit it out."

"My uncle hates gay people."

Gaara's eyes grew with mild understanding. "I see. That explains a lot of things about you and your major inferiority complex. What about your cousin?"

"She doesn't seem to mind them."

"Is that what you're worried about? Have they brainwashed you or something?" Gaara could feel intendancy rising in his stomach. "Has the denial made your feel like you need to compensate?"

"I'm not in denial!" the dark haired boy snapped.

Gaara smirked, "You're so deep in De-Nile you should just fly to De-Egypt."

"That's not funny."

"I could have just been beating you into submission. Like I said, I don't do conversation. I merely steal other's material and regurgitate it at what appears to be well-timed moments. Hell if I know." The red-headed boy looked annoyed. "Pretend you missed the Egypt joke. It sucks. I'm going to make Kankuro worry for putting it in my brain."

"Still not in denial."

"Okay, fine, you're not in denial. You're totally aware of the fact that you're wildly homosexual. Like Oscar-Freaking-Wilde. I swear, you're breaking my gaydar." Gaara blinked. "You know what? I'm not stealing anymore of Temari's lines. They sound stupid."

"Yeah, they do."

"I think I've had enough of this sitting and talking about nothing. If you change your mind, come find me. We can…eh…no witty come back. You know what we can do. You strike me as the type who could use a little pain in their life."

Neji blanched as Gaara retreated into the thicket of trees.

"I have…mangoes to count."

Nearby, behind a plantain tree, Temari and Hinata had watched most of this exchange. "Hinata?" Temari stood akimbo, watching the other girl scrutinizingly.

"Yes, Temari?"

"I love how your cousin won't screw my brother because they don't know each other well enough, not because he's not a masochist and not because he doesn't float that way."

Hinata merely tapped her fingers together and nodded.

* * *

"Hey, Hinata, you and I should go exploring in the-- why do you look so mortified." Kiba wrinkled his nose. "Wait…not like that! I meant really Temari doesn't want me to get lost so she told me to ask you if you'd go with me so I didn't mess with the natural ecosystem!"

Hinata blinked. "Oh. Okay then." She smiled. "No problem Kiba." She blushed and the two teenagers walked into the jungle. Hinata kept having to tell Kiba that hacking down the forest was a bad idea and not very nice to the plants. Apparently it worked.

"It's fun though," Kiba complained, handing Temari's machete over to Hinata.

"This is why she didn't want you to go out here alone. There would be nothing left." She wasn't used to talking so much. That was okay though, Kiba reminded her of a puppy (puns meant totally yes good chicken) and she had no problem talking to dogs.

They weren't judgmental.

Kiba didn't appear to be judgmental either. He just became obsessed with the flowers, moving from flower to flower, glancing down at them. He retained a child-like quality, which was strange for all his crudeness and teenage-angst-shit.

"Here," Kiba said, holding out a long-stemmed pink flower to Hinata. Hinata blushed, picking it out of the boy's fingers.

"Thanks."

"Yeah. Thanks for um…yeah…I really wanted to see what it was like out here. That's lame but I mean, we're on a desert island and I'm not sick or working or being hassled by really weird people, so I thought it would be cool to look around."

Hinata nodded. "It is."

"I actually don't think anyone has actually seen the jungle besides Shino and Ino because they were looking for foods and stuff. Everyone else just comes out here and does stuff that's sort of nasty."

This made Hinata blush like mad. "Oh…I guess they…do…"

"But not me," Kiba quickly assured. "I really truly only wanted to see the flowers. And the trees and the oh look! It's like a…squirrel with…only bigger and not as fluffy…with no tail. And giant pokey things."

"That's a porcupine Kiba."

"Oh. Then I suppose hugging it is out of the question."

"Very possibly."

* * *

**Thanks to Purrple Kat who totally helped me write this (she's spending the night at my house. You can blame much Gaara/Neji interraction on her.**

**Go read her KH stuff (there's a Naruto something on there too). It's pretty good. If nothing else, it'll give you something to do for a while while you should be sleeping because it's the middle of the night. Excuse the Kiba...Hina...type stuff being so short. It appeared and then disappeared and then...then it drowned itself...in jello.**


	12. Mood: Contemptuous

**I have a Sunday. Yes, a Sunday. It means that I have time. Oh fun. I didn't do homework I was supposed to finish. That's bad. I did enough of my research, however, to figure out that I'm not a Japanese mangaka with a twin brother.**

* * *

Sakura and Temari stared up at the sky. The two girls had sprawled out on the sand because 'Oh-Em-Gee' they were tired and bored. Shikamaru was there too, but he was genuinely interested in the clouds.

"You know malaria isn't contagious, right?" Sakura asked.

"Man, I did my research. I use it as an excuse not to have anything to do with a pissy teenaged boy with some serious issues and a fever. I can't let him die, so I figure we all have to make sacrifices." She glanced up at the clouds. "Poor Uzumaki. Eh, the both of them need more friends than they have."

"So you're lying, cheating, and scamming the two of them into a situation where they have no hope of avoiding each other?"

"Damn right."

"You're brilliant."

"I know, aren't I? I am a woman of many talents, and I don't even need Shikamaru to tell me that eighty million times a day so I feel 'special' and don't wangst until I get waterlogged. Ah, feminism is tasty. Like eggplants in the summer. Or the winter. Or you know, not eggplants."

"Mangos."

"Mangos."

"Do you ever get the sensation that we're dreaming?"

Temari shrugged. "You know, I've stopped caring. It's a really long, sucky dream if it is a dream. Might as well enjoy the high points. Such as, for instance, staring up at the sky for two hours and avoiding any semblance of work. That's good. Very good."

"Cloud watching is nice," Shikamaru blurted suddenly. "It's calming."

"That's why we're doing it," Temari replied. "Otherwise we'd just give up and lose our minds and man, that would suck. Like, worse than it does. Hence, 'I think malaria is contagious and as such we must avoid Uchiha at all costs'. Does this make me a horrible person for manipulating Naruto?"

"Naw," Sakura said, "it's not that horrible. Sasuke's pretty docile when he's sick. In relation to how he usually acts, anyway."

Temari laughed. "That's not all that comforting."

Sakura shrugged. "Yeah, well…welcome to life."

Temari took a handful of sand and let it escape slowly from her long, bony fingers. "Welcome to life."

"No, welcome to a soap opera disguised as a life disguised as a soap opera."

"Ah, Shikamaru. You add so much to a conversation."

"I think I want me one of him."

"I think I have me one of him."

"Touché."

* * *

"You know what? You suck!" 

"You suck more!"

"No you suck more…er…"

"Let's end this with 'the both of you suck' and the both of you are making my toes tingle in that special way the therapist talked about at the psych evaluation last year. Remember that? I didn't pass that." Gaara merely glowered at Kiba and Kankuro. "Honestly, the both of you are so amazingly immature, it's not funny."

"Nothing is funny to you."

"Pain is funny."

Kiba blinked. "Pain? Why is pain funny?"

"Clearly you've never see anything silent staring Charlie Chaplin. That man made pain hilarious." And with that, Gaara padded away, through the jungle. Kiba looked pissed because Gaara was allowed to go places without someone following him. It was the principle of the manner only, because Hinata was pretty cute.

And then it was circle time.

Kiba seriously wondered where the day had gone. Very odd that half of it was suddenly missing. Irrelevant, however, to the general idea of the real-time-god-is-what-you-make-him-existentialist-plot. Kiba blinked, unsure of whether that made any sense at all. He stopped thinking after a couple of minutes because honestly he didn't care: it was common for him to write 'lyke ths on teh int3rw3bs!!11!oeneleventyone!11!'.

He had been told time and time again that he was going to hell for that.

So grammar was really low on the list of priorities.

They sat inside the hut of campfire and watched each other with suspicion. "What are we all looking at each other like that for?" Naruto asked.

Temari shrugged across the fire. "You know what, hell if I know. I just, you know, make sure you guys don't randomly kill each other. Or me. Mostly me." She paused. "Um, why is everyone looking at each other like there's a murderer among us?"

"Lee is gone," Sakura sniffled. "I can't find him and it makes me so sad! I want to know who took him!"

Twenty-four eyes turned to look at Gaara.

"Gaara," Temari drawled. "What did you do with Sakura's lizard?"

Gaara rolled his eyes. "Why is it my fault? Pick on the psycho why don't you? Yes, let's blame me! I must have taken Sakura's lizard because I spend my days attempting to make little girls with pink hair cry. I have nothing better to do than plot my next attack on people's souls. It's not possible that the lizard ran off on it's own, is it?. It has to be me. You know what?" He narrowed his eyes. "Good day."

And Gaara left.

"What bit his butt?" Ino asked, raising an eyebrow. "Sakura, I'm sorry Lee is missing. We'll find him, I promise."

"Maybe Gaara is right. It's really possible that Lee just went back into the jungle. The island is pretty big and it isn't an domesticated lizard."

That was Sai talking.

"You know what? You suck." Sakura stuck her tongue out.

"Why do you have to be so mean, Sai?" Ino glared.

Neither Hinata nor Temari said anything. This was probably a smart move, because no one was shooting death glares in their direction and that meant less hostility aimed toward them.

"Gaara is being an angsty bitch," Kankuro muttered. "Because Neji won't sleep with him."

"Thanks Neji," Kiba murmured acidly.

"So it's my fault Sakura's lizard ran away?" Neji hissed.

"It's didn't run away! Gaara killed it!"

"No he didn't!"

"Shut the hell up!"

"This is not my fault! Gaara is a psycho! He needs to get laid."

"Then it's Neji's fault."

"It's not my fault!"

"Yes it is!"

"No, it's not!"

"Yes, it is!"

"I am above this."

"Like hell you are!"

"You guys all suck."

In the background, Hinata and Temari commenced to chat about the weather. Lovely this time of year, really. Such a good quality of light. Kind of a yellow-ish color. Tragedy at the lack of cameras.

Photographing fist fights too.

Wait…

"Try not to get anything bloody, laundry day isn't for a while."

* * *

**Purrple Kat and I are pulling an all-nighter.**

**Wish me luck, lovlies. **


	13. Mood: Apprehensive

**Hehe, lack of sleep is funny.**

**I don't own Naruto, but I do own n00bs. Every day.**

* * *

"Feeling better?"

Sasuke opened one eye but didn't say anything. '_If I shut my eyes, they will go away and life will be good again…if I shut my eyes, they will go away and life will be good again…_' Assuming life was good at any point. While we're pretending, let's pretend we're not on an island in the middle of the ocean where no one will ever find us.

"Sasuke, I know you're awake. Don't pretend you're not. You're stupid at this game." Temari jabbed him with her foot. "You're not sick anymore. Well, you are, but you need to get the hell out of here, right the hell now."

"I thought you didn't want me spreading my sickness too your precious minions," Sasuke retorted acidly, trying to elude the jabbing-foot. Temari snorted.

"Malaria is passed by mosquitoes stupid. I just used this as an excuse to avoid you for a couple of days because _dear god child_ you get on my nerves so _badly_." She wrinkled her nose and knelt to feel Sasuke's forehead. "See? Not that sick. Well, not-that-sick enough to come outside and lay on the beach. Need a little color on that skin of yours Uchiha."

"Would that entail work?"

"Nope! We want you to…um…no, actually, we're just sick of you being the subconscious center of attention. Technically that's an oxymoron but-- you have me talking to myself in full sentences. Which I always--"

Sasuke snorted.

"Screw that. Oututout!" Temari rolled the dark-haired boy into the sun, out of his shelter-cave-abode-of-doom. "Oh, the sun isn't that bright," Temari growled as Sasuke attempted to shuffle back into the cool of the shade. "You're over it."

"No," Sasuke muttered weakly, "I'm not."

"Yeah, well…sun will like…do you good?" She raised at eyebrow, more at herself than at Sasuke. "Okay, that's going to have to work. The sun will do you good. Hat's the cover story. Of course, the real idea behind all of this is--"

"Stop talking," Sasuke ordered. "I'm seriously sick of your voice and I've only been awake for a minute."

"Less than, really."

"Shut up."  
Temari laughed dryly. "That's what you think, Sassy-fras. Up and at 'em already. Moping is bad for your soul." She poked him again. Sasuke glared and got carefully to his feet, attempting to balance himself on the sand. This was a lot harder than he last remembered it being. Then again, last time, he had been completely fine.

Now he was just…

Well, pathetic. Yes. All there is to be said about that is 'pathetic'.

Temari saw it because Temari is the master of seeing people for what they are. She always had been too, and that was a talent few a man ever gave her such credit for. Sasuke glowered and she glowered right back. He wasn't a real match for her when it came to glaring contests. Or, maybe, that was the whole problem: they were the perfect match.

Sasuke usually won due to underhandedness on Temari's fault. Everything is fair, he supposed, so he couldn't hold it against her. He would have probably done the same things, had he been half as ingenious to come up with ways to make him lose.

His head was drifting away again. "Fine," he growled. "I'll go to your stupid beach."

"You're not threatening. Not even the tiniest bit." She took his hand roughly, hot in hers from fever and being laid on all night, and lead him down the paths towards the beach.

Towards the ocean.

Almost everyone else was there too. '_No, scratch that, everyone is here._'

And of course, at least two fights had broken out. Sakura was still shooting death glares at Gaara, which meant death glares from Ino too and of course, death glares at Neji because it had already been established that it was _all his bloody fault no matter what he tried to say otherwise_.

Sasuke remembered why he didn't like people so much. They were the sort that could turn on you at any moment, no real reason, just go and take a chunk out of your hand or your heart or your wallet and never say a thing to you again. They were the dangerous sort, the sort that should really be warned against. Sasuke surveyed them all with suspicion. It was only a matter of time until one of them was pushed just a bit too far...

Temari rolled her eyes and leaned against the side of a rock. "See? This is why I hate school trips. This is why, oh-of-course-you-have-to-chaperone-break-all-the-rules-you're-not-too-young. Screw that. Everyone is going to kill everyone else and I'm going to be alone…I'll go mad…"

"Tema," Kiba called from nearby, "you're already there!"

And then he and Naruto commenced to wrestle. And spar. And inflict Damage Upon Those Nearby And Not Themselves. Temari winced. Sasuke stared on in mild annoyance. He thanked down on the sand and stared up at the sky blankly. It was boring, he decided, boring here indeed. No real reason to stick around, no one would care anyway. He shut his eyes and curled up in the sunshine. '_Maybe I can take a nap?_' He wished his hadn't left his iPod wherever it had been that he had left his iPod. He could have sworn he left it in the yurt he shared with Naruto and Sai, but apparently he didn't because, as Temari had put it in such plain language, 'it's not there'.

There's not much plainer than that without dragging in at least one conspiracy. You'd be surprised how confused people get the more you talk.

Besides, Sasuke couldn't quite stomach the idea of trying to listen to Mozart. Ever since that one time when he had dreamed about it playing backwards? Yeah, the music just didn't sit right with him. Nothing he heard in his dreams sat right with him.

It was like one big curse of being Sasuke.

Sasuke figured on some level, he probably deserved everything he got. So what if he couldn't hear Beethoven without wanting to jump out a window, and so what if the very thought of Tchaikovsky was driving him slowly insane with longing and sudden desire to run into the ocean and drown himself? So what?

Here's what: Mozart was the last straw. Setting that as the backwards-background music of his twisted, fucked up dreams was just the last straw.

War had been declared. Sasuke sharpened his nails with his mind powers (because _he_ hadn't brought a nail file, but whatever) and then, leaning forward as if to attack the metaphor that didn't honestlyreallytrulyalltheway exist…

Sasuke fell over and just didn't have quite the motivation to get up again just then.

* * *

"Neji." 

Neji turned to face Gaara. They had found themselves in the thicket of the east side jungle, mostly at the urging of Gaara and, oddly, Naruto. It wasn't like he and Naruto were the best of friends, even though they had their run-ins in grade school (in fact, many of aforementioned run-ins ended in some form of violence/pain/blood to one or both boys).

"What do you want, Gaara?" Neji's eyes, pupil less and pale, narrowed considerably.

"Just wanted to talk to you," Gaara purred. Purred was the best name to try and come up with another verb-adjective-failed-parts-of-speech. "You're not so adverse to spending a little quality time with your island mates, are you? After all, who knows how long we're going to be stuck out here," Gaara took another step forward as Neji took one back, "and who knows what kind of horrible things might happen?" Gaara's eyes had begun to glow with the sadism that eternally pulsed beneath his eyelids, under his cheeks, between his lips and through his eyes. As much as it felt good to glow, felt good to exist and be noticed, Gaara controlled the sudden urge to_hurt something until it began to bleed._ "Not talking to me?"

"No. I am not going to have anything to do with you! You know what? Sakura won't even sit near me. She blames you for being an ass and killing her lizard, but she blames me for making you an ass. Do you know how scary she is?" Neji could feel anger of his own, pulsing through his arteries and leaking from his pores, even as he tried to restrain it. '_Remember, Neji, that the Hyuuga family is above such silly thoughts. Control your anger boy. Please, Neji…_'

"Not really."

"Exactly!" Neji threw up his hands, reaching them towards the sky. "Next thing you know, it'll be my fault that there isn't any more mangoes because I was supposed to ration them. And I did, only for how long? It can't be permanent. And as if that's not enough--"

Neji decided to take this opportunity to cut Neji off by shoving an iPod in his face.

"Look what I have," he said shortly.

"What?" Neji examined it. "Whose is it? And does it have batteries?" Very few iPods had anything left, mostly because no one had any idea how long they were going to be out in the middle of nowhere. Listen lots, dies fast. The battery, that is. The battery dies.

Gaara nodded. "I stole it from Uchiha. It wasn't like he was going to use it, what with the fact that he's probably going to pass out as soon as he gets to the beach. No one will ever notice it's missing." He didn't smile, but it almost looked like he should have, just to punctuate the words of lustful mischief. For all Neji knew, Gaara was lying through his unexposed teeth. That could be anyone's iPod. Did he have a right to be afraid of the redhead? He had seen what the boy was capable of and he remembered rumors and he remembered Gaara's sadistic tone of voice the last time they had spoken.

"You want to know what I'm gong to do with it?" Neji felt afraid to ask. Everything about Gaara made him a little bit afraid because Gaara was the opposite of everything Neji had been taught to revere: Gaara was wild and unruly, completely deranged and uncontrollable, ready for any fight or any battle, no matter when or where. Gaara was wild in his thoughts and his actions, always so ready to take on what was thrown at him, head on and with 'feeling'. Gaara wasn't content with what fate threw him and instead set out to make the world a better place, if only for him. Maybe smoke a cigarette on the road to existentialism.

Neji felt small near him.

Neji felt weak.

"Well, I'll show you. Sit." It was an order, a direct command. Neji obeyed it without complaint or quesiton, sitting opposite Gaara amid the lush green undergrowth of the east-side jungle. "Shut your eyes."

"Gaara…" Neji trailed off, leaving his warning hanging. He felt apprehension prickle at his stomach, just a little, a dribble of discomfort that could blossom into a ruddy blood blister of a fear.

"Shut the hell up and do it already."

Obediently, Neji's white eyes fluttered closed but he held his hands at ready, totally prepared to slap anything that came within close range of anywhere that might be considered objectionable by crazy cultists who believe that negativity will kill their babies. Gaara placed his hands on Neji's shoulders and waited, one eye opened and the other squeezed shut. Neji bit his lip, unable to see, and prepared for the worst.

Instead, music started. Good music, fast music, with a hundred different parts to one and a just one part to a hundred. It sped up and slowed down with grace and accuracy, ancient and at the same time it was so easy to connect to. At least, for Neji. This kind of music took a certain style. It was a good style of sound.

More specifically, classical music.

More specifically--

"Beethoven's fifth?"

* * *

**Aha! I shall be having full night of sleep tonight! So tomorrow's update might be sort of normal-esque. Unfortunately, now is not tomorrow. Have anything questions or comments? Concrit is always welcome-welcome (on the content...typos and stuff signify times of stress, not lack of grammar-skills.) Also, excuse my lack of replying to reviews, my email has been hating on me.  
**

**Night Lovlies.**


	14. Mood: Contemplative

**So here goes. Again. 200 reviews? Yes-no-cookie? 200 means time for another Sasuke-angst-dream next chapter, in which one **fierymetis** appears (I'm pretty sure she caught my 200...and if I counted wonky...then I suppose she's just lucky XD). She's one of many amazing-ing reviews. Disclaimers apply.**

* * *

It was his fault. 

All his fault.

And Gaara blamed him exclusively.

That stupid, stupid lizard.

"Shut up! I knew you did it!" Sakura shrieked. "You took him!" She hugged Lee to her bosom and cuddled him. "See? You're so cruel and bloodthirsty and-- he didn't hurt him, did he? He didn't make you cry, did he?"

"Reptiles have no tear…ducts…" Neji trailed off. "What? This isn't my fault!" He whined. "See? He was psychotic on his own! I didn't make him crazy! Not even the tiniest bit." Ah, sanity, it is elusive in its own right.

"Thanks, Neji. Really. Honestly." Gaara paused. "I'm being sarcastic, you know that, right?"

"You need to explain that?" Ino wrinkled her nose. "You guys are all made of fail. In other news…I have no other news. I'm out." She padded away, ditching Sakura, Gaara and Neji alone in the clearing. Well, technically, Zabuza was there too but no one cares about that really because he never says anything and he only talked to Haku and sometimes Temari, because Temari is amazing and everyone talks to her. It's like a rule. An unwritten rule.

There were a lot of unwritten rules floating around. They included, but were not limited to:

1) It's your fault. Doesn't matter who the 'you' in question happens to be, it's always 'your' fault. Oh yes. Always. Skank whore, go die.

2) It is never okay to shirk your duties. So shall you be shirking, so shall you be shank...ing...

3) Rules 1 and 2 always apply.

Neji had been in charge of keeping those in order, since he was the one in charge of rationing and government and such. Only, unlike many of the worlds modern governments, he was not the brains behind everything. OMGEH THE POLITICAL LEADER IS ACTUALLY THE ONE BEING POLITICAL! Not that it was really being political, since Temari was the unrivaled ruler of the small island socialist dictatorship.

Give me Temari or Give Me Death, '08. I'd vote for her.

Neji leaned against a tree to watch the Gaara and Sakura interaction. He decided to sum it up in a few key words: 'shout', 'kill', 'fuck', 'lizard', 'disgusting'.

Everything else sort of fell in between the cracks.

And it continued on like this, this incessant arguing. Neji started quoting Catch-22 in his head.

Not even metaphorically.

Literally.

_"They were the most depressing group of people Yossarian had ever been with. They were always in high spirits. They laughed at everything."_

Well, that quote was totally irrelevant. Totally and completely. All the way. However, Neji was oddly thankful for this moment because, honestly, he had a chance to contemplate Gaara. Mostly because he was being a 'really-good-friend' and riding out the wave of insanity. Always a good thing to do. Wins you points.

_"'Hasn't it ever occurred to you that in your promiscuous pursuit of women you are merely trying to assuage your subconscious fears of sexual impotence?' _

_'Yes, sir, it has.' _

_'Then why do you do it?' _

_'To assuage my subconscious fears of sexual impotence.'" _

And then it occurred to Neji that he wasn't promiscuous.

'_Catch -22 sucks._'

Sort of.

* * *

Sasuke leaned against the side of the shelter. He was still insanely tired, even if his fever was almost entirely gone. Naruto sat opposite him, watching with bright blue eyes that had grown wide and spacey from too long looking at nothing. 

"What do you want?" Sasuke demanded. "You've been sitting here for at least a half hour." In all honesty, Sasuke had no idea how long they had been sitting there but that didn't matter. That didn't matter at all. Naruto was still being annoying.

"I…you…Te…" Naruto shook his head violently to clear it. "Um, yeah. They asked me to make sure you're okay and everything. Besides, I'm really bored and stuff. You should talk to me." He beamed until the dimples on his cheeks showed up. Sasuke had to tear his gaze away and focus it on something else. This something happened to be the fire place.

That sucks.

"I don't want to."

"That's what SHE said!"

Sasuke rubbed his temples. '_If only,_' he mourned quietly. _'if only Naruto wasn't so damned annoying._' If only he wasn't so annoying what? If only he wasn't so annoying, they could be friendly? Friends? More than friends?

Sasuke realized he had never had a friend before.

'_Fuck, that's just sad._'

"Oh please," Sasuke growled, "that's what HE said and we both know it." He bit his lip. He had never made a joke like that before, not so pointedly. Naruto's mouth hung open in almost-fury. The blond screwed his eyes up.

"Yeah…well…" He opened his eyes again, "at least I'm getting some."

"Sure you are. Really." Sasuke rolled his eyes. It was almost comfortable, laughing and joking like that. Or, at the very least, snickering and making badly constructed jibes at each other's sexuality. Sasuke grinned behind his mouth (which, technically, couldn't exist but he didn't care so much) and raked his fingers through his hair.

They sat in silence after that, which looked sort of awkward on Naruto.

"So," Naruto muttered, "we should get to sleep, yeah. Long day…tomorrow…yesterday…"

"And tomorrow, and last week, and next year."

"Change is a constant."

There was a long pause while Sasuke tried to come up with something to say.

"True, Uzumaki. Very true." Sasuke lay down and shut his eyes. "It's kind of cold," he muttered. "Even though it gets hot at night." It wasn't 'I am cold', it was 'it is cold'. Because cold is weak and weak is cold. Things break when they're cold. Rubber in nitroglycerin is only one example.

Sasuke blamed the inertia of the bounding rubber tennis ball, only he didn't play tennis.

So that was sort of a stupid analogy.

'_My head hurts,_' he thoughts dully. '_I'm officially losing coherency._' He winced and shivered. It really was cold, the biting and nipping kind that longed to rip off his skin and feed it to the wolves of the world, wolves that were hell bent on--

"Come here then." The voice was airy, soft but juiced with energy.

"What?" Sasuke could feel his eyes widen, expose themselves further to the frigid air.

"I said, come here then. What, you half-deaf Uchiha?"

"Why?" Sasuke's head jerked up, his breath catching. '_No wolves?_' He knew what the blond child was saying, just not…_what_ he was saying. Assuming that makes very much sense.

It didn't.

Naruto shrugged his shoulders and propped himself up on one elbow to survey Sasuke. "It's warmer over here. Knowing Sai, he's going to want to snuggle…assuming he ever does get back from wherever he is right now. Go figure." Sasuke could see Naruto's smile flash in the dark. Even in the dark. Especially in the dark. "Personally, I think I'm a better choice since I neither randomly comment on people's bodies nor act as if I have no emotions.

"I'd rather freeze," Sasuke grumbled. '_No, liar, I is liar child! Shush, shush!_' he scolded himself. '_Stop it, you cold, he has warm, go to him, silly boy, survival before pride._' But it had never been survival before pride. His parents, dead in the ground, could attest to that. Their selfish pride had driven Itachi into a rage that, ultimately, had killed them.

"Sure you would. Sure you would."

Sasuke wouldn't admit it, but he was pretty sure he had scooted just a little closer to the blond boy at that particular moment in time.

Because, you know, it is pretty damn cold in drift-wood structures. Palm fronds just don't cut it.

* * *

**And so, in a flurry of snail-paced-ness, SasuNaru begins to rear its head.**

**And Lee comes back.**

**And I listen to Haemoglobin by Placebo whil pwning n00bs who deserve it. Man, life is good. Gooooood.  
**


	15. Mood: Barely Lucid

**Well will you look at that. Life goes on. Standard disclaimers apply (No Naruto, No Jefferson Airplane's 'White Rabbit'.) **

**Hey look everybody, there's some actually slash in this. Honest, consensual slash. Really. **

**And after this chapter? I bump this puppy up to M.**

* * *

Neji leaned against Gaara's back. Gaara leaned back, humming and tapping his foot along to some song that only he could hear. He wasn't even sure the title of the song. It might have been Japanese, or it might not have been. Hence, in essence, the 'I Don't Know'. 

"It's quiet," Neji muttered under his breath, fiddling with a long strand of his hair. Behind him, he could feel Gaara radiate hostility for a second before reverting to what one might call his 'average Gaara'. Not so much different than your average Gaara, just a little less homicidal. And by homicidal, I mean seriously messed up in the head. Kill...Kill...

"I like it that way."

'So do I."

"Then why are you talking?" Gaara turned his head and leaned back to stare into Neji's eyes. Neji stared back. It was the stupid_proximity_ issue again. He hated that it had to be an issues. That took all the fun out of everything. And by 'all the fun', Neji had no idea what he was talking about.

Islands do that to you. Seeing the same people day after day after day after day, never actually doing anything besides sitting around and contemplating the world (read: trying to restrain from clubbing each over the head with the nearest pointy object). It was kind of like solitary, only…

With other people around.

Even though that defeats the purpose, it doesn't make things much better, honestly. In fact, it makes them worse because now, for the low-low price of your _soul_, you can all lose your mind together!

It's a one time rate.

"You're cute," Gaara blurted, shifting to face Neji. This did nothing for the close-ness issue. Nothing nothing nothing at all.

Neji blinked. "What?" He was pretty sure Gaara didn't think things were very cute. And, if by some random, rather off chance he did, he wouldn't say that out loud _or_ think Neji was cute. It was just not done. Not done at all.

"I said," Gaara leaned closer…so close Neji could feel his breath over his face and smell the vague scent of mangoes. '_So that's what happened to the supply!_' He quickly cleared his mind though because it was just too cluttered to worry about the rationing of tropical fruits. "That you're cute. Like a puppy." He slipped his arms around Neji's neck, pulling him closer…closer…

Neji found himself unable to pull away as their lips connected and he found himself lying on his back. '_I should be pushing him the hell off,_' he thought. '_But I don't want to._' Fuck his upbringing…fuck his sanity and fuck that stupid voice in his head telling him he didn't want to be _touched_. Even if there was no emotion behind Gaara's mechanical movements, no real thought, it felt good to be desired.

Wanted.

Needed.

It felt good to lose his mind with someone there to help him find it again.

Returning Gaara's kiss fervently, desperately, Neji knotted his fingers into the strands of red that blurred his eyesight and yanked back to try and liberate his mouth to get a drink of air. Then it was back to the ferocious, fractured need flowing from mouth to mouth, from head to head.

Neji could feel his coherent mind sneaking out of his head, leaking into the sand and dribbling onto the rocks around them. It was like a sprinkler system for knowledge. No, it was a drainage system for propaganda: Gaara is a ruthless child, dating will get you in trouble, sinners go to hell.

Neji found his stopped caring instantly.

Gaara pressed one hand against Neji's underside and slid it up the taut pale skin beneath Neji's sun-bleached shirt. The hand just rested there, waiting, sitting patiently and benignly on Neji's stomach. It wasn't threatening. It was…

It was comforting.

Because someone else was dipping into the world of the mindless lust and longing for affection. He could psychoanalyze Gaara to the end of the world and still not know a thing about the enigmatic redhead. What could he do? There was nothing, only speculation to work from, and Neji figured it was safer just to go along with the whole thing. Maybe his brain would hurt less, maybe it would just be easier.

Neji found Gaara's tongue prodding at his tightly closed lips. He opened his mouth cautiously and found it suddenly occupied, honestly occupied, and whatever coherent bit of his mind that had been narrating this piece of prose began to dribble out of his ears.

Time for shiny omnipotent narrator.

We like them.

This one's name is George.

Neji sighed against Gaara's mouth. He lay back, slamming his eyes shut, and slipped his hands to Gaara's waist. It made his body feel fuzzy and warm and probably some other stuff too. Stuff George won't go into to save the virgin eyes of small children.

Only there aren't any virgin eyes or small children here. So now the narrator is gone and no one knows who's talking right now.

"See? Not so bad?" Gaara smiles lecherously. "Your hair is so pretty." He ran his fingers through a strand of Neji's hair. "Like a girl's."

Neji glowered, baring hte edges of his teeth as fiercely as he could. "I don't want to look like a girl."

"Too late." Gaara bit down on Neji's neck, just below where his shirt should have gone, and slipped his hands up further and further up the brunette's body. He wrestled Neji's shirt off, awkward and gracelessly, abandoning it somewhere to his right. He kissed Neji's collar bone, biting down on the skin below it, moving downwards--

"Yack!"

Both teenaged boys looked up to face a mortified looking Kiba.

"Shit man…you guys are…dude, I cannot handle this right now…or ever…I'm going to leave…" He covered his ears and began to run in the opposite direction as fast as he could, screaming blood murder about how bloody insane everything bloody was.

'_Excuse me, Uchiha is the emo one._' Neji wasn't sure how true that was, but it let him pin the blame on someone who wasn't him.

And that, boys and girls, felt good.

No, screw that, everything felt good.

* * *

_And in the morning when the pretty girlies sing,_

_They sing,_

_They sing,_

_Oh, hail in the morning when the pretty girlies sing,_

_I can see your eyes bleeding darling, I can see them reading so, so red, darling…_

_This is death by caner of the mind._

_This is death by your sudden inability to breath in the air._

_The girl leaned against the wall-that-wasn't-there. "Ha," she laughs, cold and heartless, "you're so pathetic, tragic tragic…"_

_One pill makes you larger,_

_One pill makes you small,_

_And the ones that mother gives you,_

_Don't do anything at all…_

_Sasuke blinking and girl muttering about houses made of white and of all the silly, useless things. Her voice was pretty, Sasuke thought, pretty like an opera singer? No? Yes? His skin felt pretty too, and his eyes, so he didn't know if it was just him or whether the girl really could sing._

_"Pretty," he commented. He commented that as a general comment on everything. Everything was beautiful. Everything was pretty._

_"I wrote it," she sighs. "Wrote it…or dreamed it…I slept in the moonlight and now I see all the glittery stars…"_

_He felt so confused. Everything confused him. There was no reason he shouldn't be. There was no reason he should be either. God, his head hurt. There was so much he didn't know, and so much he did know but at the same time refused to admit really exist and hot damn...damned children and damned mothers and hookers and killers...he was a killer too, in his own respect. Not like his brother though._

_His brother was a different sort of killer. A physical killer. Sasuke was a mental killer: it must have been him who drove Itachi to madness, made him kill their parents in cold blood. That must be the difference. He was a murdering bastard too, no matter how it ended up playing out. He leaned against a picket fence, white and almost invisible in hte shimmering red light._

_"I like this song," murmurs the girl. Her song ceases when she talks, even thought she's pretended that she can hear music. Sasuke found this hard to deal with. She didn't seem like a shallow person, but then again, who was he to judge?_

_"As do I," Sasuke said finally. "As do I.: _

_Sasuke kept walking. It was neurosis, neurosis incarnate. Sasuke kept walking to nowhere, because he didn't know where he was going anyway, and it might as well help to avoid people all together. Because people hurt._

_So he walked in circles._

_And with that, the pain began._

_It tore through his body like lightning, ripping to shreds the ending of his nerves and the tips of his fingers and the backs of his bloody eyes. They were bloody, too, and suddenly all he could see was redredred blooblooblood and all that came with it: colors that shouldn't have existed and words spelled out in the fluid._

_"Help me," he screamed. He didn't _want_ help, he needed it._

Sasuke found himself awake at the bottom of the yurt, staring up into the fearful eyes of a blond teenaged boy. Sasuke, confused and barely there, clung tightly to the form near him, beside him, in the vicinity. He clung because he was afraid.

Because he was still a little boy and his parents were still dead and his brother…

Was still his brother.

Hands stroked along his back, in an innocent sort of way that Sasuke hadn't felt in a long time. A caring sort of way. Sasuke figured he would hate the person later, wish ill thoughts on them one day at some later time, growl and spit and hiss.

But he leaned into the touch anyway, rubbing his cheek against the figure's chest. He could feel fingers weave their way in and out of his silky black hair that made his legs tingle in what felt like joy. He felt warm, rather safe against his body. It's nice to know what you're doing, what you're against, as long as it's utterly safe. He felt okay. Good even.

Hating everything in the world could wait until tomorrow.

"Sh, Sasuke, calm down. Everything will be alright."

Only a little faith was lost in the golden-haired being. Everything would not be okay. Everything would be wrong.

He was wrong.

It was wrong.

The girt signing the repetitive song, about Alice and the White Rabbit and all the other things that were there but never mentioned.

All of it was wrong.

"Please," he whispered softly into the fabric that rushed to meet his mouth and nose. "Please." He knew he would never talk like that…he would just…

He forgot where he was, how he got here.

He shut his eyes and curled up in a corner.

Alone.

_ When logic and proportion...  
Have fallen sloppy dead..._

* * *

**Damn man, I messed myself up with this chapter. Written pretty late (meant to do it sooner) and lack of sleep plus euphoria means some wonky stuff. Please, excuse. I just...wanted to let loose? Plus, school ish t3h stressfulls.**

**M rating appears soon. Not necessarily a lemon...probably just for swearing and such.**

**Bloopers, since I was typing at two in the morning: **

"Not so much different, but at least they don't mind the whole skipping class and learning the cello."

"And then he felt so tired...like tired...like...tired...

Tada. More of what almost made it in here will come one day.


	16. Interlude I

**Standard Disclaimers.**

**Sasuke!Memory interlude. Back to the island…eventually. This interlude might rant a couple of chapters. (Read: running out of ideas and I need to regroup)**

* * *

"Come along Sasuke, I'm sure you'll like these people."

Sasuke followed the middle aged woman down the driveway. The day was very cold, he remembered that clearly, and he was bundled in a very warm purple parka that reached up to his red nose. He hugged the outfit around his body and scurried to keep up with the woman in front of him. He wondered how she wasn't cold in nothing but a knee length slate skirt and grey jacket to match. Her shoes clacked over the grey asphalt. She walked around the edge of the grass where the driveway turned but Sasuke traipsed right through the grass, leaving indentations on his sneakers.

He didn't like the woman so much. She was quiet and unkind, short with him and everyone around her. She drove a white car that looked older than Sasuke and had leather seats that had been reupholstered recently. On the side, there was a decal with the words 'Social Services' printed on it in ugly black block letters. Sasuke fidgeted and the woman knocked on the door of the house.

It was opened by a blank-eyed teenager with grey glasses and grey hair and pale skin that looked almost grey too. The social worker said something in English, something Sasuke didn't really understand all the way, even though he caught his own name. The teenager stepped aside and let them into the poorly-lit house. The walls were beige and kind of boring, Sasuke decided, and there were band posters of bands he had never heard of before. He looked around, taking in all the different sensations that assaulted him from all sides. The room smelled like death to him…honestly rotting animals. The woman didn't seem so put off. Did she not smell it?

"Sasuke," she turned to him, her bright eyes scrutinizing Sasuke with intensity that made Sasuke _hate her_. She looked terrifying, looming over him like a mountain. "Sasuke, this is Kabuto. He's going to be your foster brother. You'll get along, won't you." That wasn't a question. Not at all. Sasuke nodded mutely. Her Japanese was horrible, broken and halting and not the least bit comforting.

"Hello." Kabuto was clearly Japanese, or at the very least fluent, and Sasuke relaxed a tiny bit to hear someone speak his native language.

"Hello," Sasuke replied softly. He could hear how shaky he sounded it and he hated it, even though he couldn't keep the waver out of his voice. Very few people his presence and even fewer wanted him around and it frightened him to face strangers.

"Do you drink milk?" Kabuto asked. His voice had a lilting quality, flittering through the air and swirling around Sasuke's face. He didn't drink milk very often, but that was because his last foster home had been incredibly poor. He nodded his head at Kabuto's inquiry and this made the grey-haired older teen smile a thin, wiry smile to match his glasses. "Then come into the kitchen with me."  
Sasuke followed. If only he had known then that this would be the start of something horrible, something scarring and ripping and tearing. Instead he just smiled, happy that this boy spoke Japanese and not English like the Social Worker and followed him into the kitchen, smiling brightly and bounced down the halls. He sat down at the cherry table excitedly. Excitement bubbled in his gut

"So, Sasuke." Kabuto poured Sasuke a glass of white, sleek milk and set it in front of him. Kabuto's hands were long and slender, Sasuke decided. He seemed nice, too. Kabuto sat next to Sasuke. "So, where did you live before this?" He smiled another sulky smile and rested his chin propped up on his hand, his elbow, his long, slender white arm.

Sasuke took a tentative sip of milk, sucking down the smooth liquid, into his stomach. Ceasing to drink, he reached across the table for a paper towel but his chubby hands came up short. Kabuto ripped off a sheet of white and handed it to Sasuke, who folded it into quarters and wiped his mouth self-consciously. "With a lady and a man and their daughter Cassidy." He only remembered the girl's name, and only then because she had been about his age and very bossy.

"Oh?" Kabuto's eyebrows raised. "Were they kind?"

Sasuke shrugged his shoulders and took another sip of milk. A few of the opaque drops dribbled down his chin and he wiped them away with the back of his purple-parka-covered hands. "They were kind of boring. Cassidy was really bossy…you're not bossy, are you?" He cocked his head to one side. He usually didn't talk this much, but Kabuto seemed nice.

Kabuto smiled thinly. "I don't believe so. Tell me, what grade are you in school?"

"Fourth," Sasuke replied. He was quivering with excitement. "I'm eight. What about you?"

"I'm a freshman in high school. Fourteen." Kabuto tapped his hands on the table, his fingernails connecting with the cherry table in intervals of seconds. "Do you enjoy your learning?" His tone had gone a bit strained and Sasuke was instantly worried he had begun to bore the other boy. Sasuke nodded reticently, so as to avoid unnecessary speech. "What do you enjoy studying?"

Sasuke shrugged his thin shoulders. "I like math." He took another drink of milk and watched Kabuto. The older boy seemed really nice. "Do you like math?" Cassidy had never been happy unless someone was talking about her, maybe Kabuto was like that?

"Yes," Kabuto replied shortly. "I prefer science, however. Chemistry." His tone was clipped and his eyes were watchful. "Do you have a problem with English, Sasuke?"

Sasuke lowered his gaze to the surface of the table. "A little. I can understand some, but I sound bad trying to talk." He sighed and slid down the back of his chair. "The kids at my old school thought I was stupid, but I'm not."

Kabuto smiled what might be described as half-way between understanding and almost satisfied. "Oh, well, I'm sure you'll get better at it then. You seem like a smart kid." He raised a scrutinizing eyebrow at Sasuke, who lowered his head and took another gulp of milk.

"Thank you," he said quietly. He wasn't sure what else to say.

The Social Worker reappeared. "Sasuke, would you like to meet your new foster father?" She stumbled over the conjugation of 'meet'. Sasuke winced but nodded. "Splendid. This way." She motioned for Sasuke to follow her. "Leave the milk."

Sasuke reached back and took one last long swig of milk before getting up and following the woman down the long hallways of the house. It was really big, Sasuke noticed, bigger than the last house he had lived in. Not as big as the house he had lived in with his parents, but big enough. He bit his lip, feeling it quivering beneath his teeth. His parents…

"Sasuke, this is Orochimaru." The social worker gestured to a man sitting in the living room, on the couch, eyeing Sasuke carefully. "He's going to be your foster father." Sasuke nodded. "Why don't you sit down, Sasuke?"

Sasuke sat down on the leather couch. He felt very small, but bubbly. He always felt bubbly when he got somewhere new, even though he knew that on some level he really shouldn't be because he had no idea how long it might be good. Maybe this family would be different. Kabuto seemed nice.

Orochimaru smiled. His tongue was a little like a snake tongue, Sasuke decided. He was sort of creepy looking. "Good morning, Sasuke," Orochimaru purred. Sasuke wrinkled his nose. He didn't like Orochimaru's voice. It wasn't as pleasant as Kabuto's and it seemed more predatory than that of the woman. At least, when it came to the social worker, it was just poor Japanese and that wasn't scary, that was sort of funny.

"Good morning, Mr. Orochimaru." Sasuke wasn't sure what his last name was, because the social worker had never mentioned it, and he thought that sort of strange. He didn't mind though, he wasn't going to call Orochimaru by his last name anyway. "It's very nice to meet you."

"Very good to meet you as well." Orochimaru smiled, exposing bright, fang-like teeth. Sasuke shuddered. "I'm sure you'll come to enjoy living here."

Sasuke nodded. If only he had known.

* * *

Sasuke sat on the curb, watching the cars zoom by. It was the dead of summer, hot and sticky, worth of very little clothing. Instead, he sat in jeans and a thin jacket, sweating profusely and trying to lean into the shade of the oak tree.

"Hello!" called a bubbly voice from somewhere above his head. Sasuke glanced up in confusion. His gaze met that of a brown-haired girl, maybe his age or a little younger, clad in a short denim skirt and a swishy purple top. "What are you doing out here?"

"Sitting," Sasuke replied shortly. He had learned that nice people weren't always as nice as they seemed. Even if she was just a girl, that didn't make her alright. "Why do you care?" The words slipped out before he could stop them.

"I was just wondering." She sat beside him. "I saw you out here yesterday too and the day before and the day before and I didn't know why you were out here. It's hot. Why aren't you inside?" She poked his cheek with one finger. "See, you're getting all read."  
Sasuke glowered. "I don't want to go inside." He didn't. Kabuto, Tayuya and Kimimaro had long since taken to staying out all day, leaving Sasuke alone with just Juugo and Kin. He didn't like them much: they were older but not as smart. Kin was sort of mean to him. She had been kind of mean to him ever since Kidomaru had been adopted. Sasuke wrinkled his nose in his memory. Who would like him?

"Why not?" the girl asked. She bounced her knees up and down. "Do you not like your parents? My friend Julia's sister Wilma doesn't like her parents very much either. Why don't you like yours?" Sasuke stared at his knees. Underneath the jeans he wore, they lay there pasty and mottled with scars and scabs. Why wouldn't this girl stop talking?

"I don't have parents. I live with my foster father." He pointed at the house behind him. He would rather not talk about it.

"Oh." The girl tapped her heels in the gutter. "What's your name?"

That was a simple question. "Sasuke."

"Mine's Leila." Leila sighed and leaned back into the shade, stretching out onto the shade. "I don't much like Orochimaru."  
Sasuke raised an eyebrow. "Do you know him?"

"Not really." She stared up at the leaves stretching up above them. "He shouts a lot." She propped herself up on one elbow. "Is he shouting at you?"

Sasuke shrugged. "Sometimes. Sometimes it's Tayuya because she spends all night out and sometimes it's Kabuto because he cooked something wrong or Kimimaro because he's sick again and Orochimaru thinks that it costs too much money."

"Oh." Leila watched the boy carefully, playing with one strand of brown hair. "What does he yell at you about?"

"I'm not telling." A little piece of Sasuke-as-he-used-to-be shone through. He stuck his tongue out. "So there."

Leila raised one eyebrow. "Oh?"

Sasuke picked at the hem of his jeans. "He yells at me for everything."  
"Oh. Well I think he's stupid. He's never very nice about fundraisers. Then again," she stretched back, "he's not nice about anything."

"You can say that again," Sasuke hissed. Leila raised any eyebrow.

"He's not nice about anything." She grinned, unabashed but a little cold. "Never liked him much anyway. My ma says he collects kids. That's sort of creepy, I think." She turned her icy eyes on Sasuke. He flinched. He flinched when anyone stared at him for too long. "Does he collect kids?"

Sasuke had never really contemplated the idea. Collecting children? Kimimaro collected pill bottles and Tayuya collected CDs and Kabuto collected chemistry sets. It only followed for Orochimaru to collect children, right?

Right?

* * *

**Ha! Sasuke angst.**

**Excuse my haitus and my boring. Please.**

**Leila is going to appear again because I've taken a liking to her (she's based off one of my reviewers!) **


	17. Interlude II

**Lalala…I has a pretty bunch of coconuts! And a banana. But not Naruto. Neither does this chapter, actually. No, not true, there is a little of him at the end but that doesn't sound as good to say.**

**More Sasuke!Past!Angsting. It's…necessary to fully explain certain things? Only the first half, actually. Also, be warned of a bit of Japanese usage (Japanese with a J, not with a W. I conjugate mah verbs.) Oh and het.**

**(You know, I have more reviews on 16 chapters of this than I do on 16 chapters of Road Trip? Like you care…)**

* * *

Sasuke turned up his music just a little bit louder. Kin was screaming, that was not unusual, and Tayuya was making even more noise than that. That was not surprising either. Tayuya seemed to like to hear herself shout, especially when there were expletives involved. She was almost eighteen anyway: old enough, honestly, to move out on her own. Not quite though.

Kimimaro was sick again. That was it. The source of the yelling. Sasuke shut his eyes and screwed them up in annoyance and pain from the headache that had set in. Kimimaro was going to die, simple as that, and Sasuke was sure that Orochimaru was counting the days, hoping and praying with all his blackened soul, that Kimimaro would turn eighteen before he got it so bad the health insurance wouldn't cover.

Then it wouldn't be Orochimaru's problem anymore.

Beethoven spilled out of Sasuke's speakers. One of his friends (if you could call him that…it was Leila's brother) had mixed it with a foundation of hard-rock. Sasuke wasn't fond of hard rock or Beethoven, but somehow he felt calmer listening to this particular patchwork of sound. It was like an acid trip, Sasuke had decided. Plus, it annoyed the fuck out of everyone who happened to walk by.

That in itself probably made it worth it.

"Turn that fucking music down, you fucking boi-slut!" Ah, Tayuya. You could actually hear the 'i' at the end of 'boy'.  
Sasuke wanted to shriek something back, but he was too dignified for shrieking. Instead, he kicked his stereo up a couple of notches until it was so amazingly loud that it ricocheted through his room, reverberating off of the walls and into his ears. He could hear all the screaming from the living room, but that didn't matter because he was the least of their worries. In fact, he could do anything he wanted and mostly slip through the cracks.

It seemed like everyone in the house was preoccupied: Kimimaro was sick and Tayuya was drunk, Kin was lonely and Kabuto was reclusive. After Juugo was adopted, the fat fuck, everything had gone to hell. It wasn't even like he was particularly important to the dynamic, only that his leaving was the catalyst that set off the very first domino.

Sasuke's door smacked open. "For fuck's sake." Tayuya stood in the doorway, eyes wide with anger. She stormed in on a cloud of alcohol and kicked Sasuke's stereo until it just…stopped…moving. "Will you shut up?" She leaned against the wall and slid down it, hiding her head in her hands. "Please…" She made little sniffling noises.

"Tayuya?" It wasn't concern, merely surprise. He had never seen Tayuya cry, ever. She looked so sad. "What's wrong?" Maybe if she talked, it would destroy the silence that had descended over the room. Sasuke bit his lip. Even if Tayuya was a bitch half the time, it didn't mean that she didn't have feelings.

Not that Sasuke really cared.

"Kimimaro," she breathed. "He'll be eighteen in a couple of weeks and then Orochimaru is going to throw him out and then he's going to die." She gave a hiccupping sob, an unusual, un-Tayuya-like sob. "I don't want him to die."

Sasuke sat down opposite her. He had been cold and numb, for ages and ages, and now he felt…

Almost nothing. But almost nothing is not the same as nothing. "Tayuya?" he breathed. She had lived here years, as had he, but Sasuke couldn't recall the last time he had a real conversation with the girl. She was always so loud, so angry at everything. It must have been six months, at the very least. So much had changed since then: once, long ago, they had been close. Now, after all this time, the only thing he really knew about her, somewhere deep inside his brain, was that she was irrevocably in love with Kimimaro.

And that she liked booze.

A lot.

"That's horrible." The words escaped Sasuke's mouth before he had a chance to stop them. He did feel bad for her. Orochimaru was not a kind man, not by any stretch of Stockholm's imagination, and he supposed Tayuya had every right to cry like that. She was a girl, after all.

"You have no idea." She took a deep breath. "Sasuke, don't give up or anything stupid like that, okay?" She smiled a small, bitter smile. Sasuke found in frightening, scary. It made him want to turn and run because Tayuya rarely smiled. And when she did…not like this…this was wrong.

"You won't do anything stupid, will you?" He was still young…fourteen was too young for this. He was still young enough to feel primal worry for this girl he had grown up with. No…grown up beside.

"I'm leaving," she said. She stood and dusted her clothing off and ran her fingers through her hair. "I figure it's better to leave now than to wait until I get thrown out. At least this way," a toothy grin, "I can have myself a fight."

Sasuke watched her start for the door. "Wait," he said. Tayuya turned. The light framed her silhouette, slim but beautiful, with golden brilliance.

"Yes?" She turned her head and a halo of frizzy pink followed, illuminated by a steady stream of photons assaulting it from behind. "What is it, Sasuke?"

"Don't die."

"You were never tactful, were you?" She smiled sadly. "I suppose that's okay. Don't die either."  
And then she turned to go. Sasuke shut the door behind her and lay on his floor, staring at the ceiling and trying to tune out the argument that would undoubtedly progress to violence at some point. He admired her on some level, leaving this place of pain and suffering. He wished he could do that. Only…he was too afraid. Too weak.

And the shouting began. At first it was muffled arguing, but soon is rose into the air, made it's way down the hall. It was loud, shaking, and it seemed to slither into every single crevice in Sasuke's room. It seemed to be everywhere. He couldn't tune it out.

"Baita!"  
_Slut._

"Kusokurae, yora sha."

_Fuck off, you fucked up perv._

"Damare, ama!"

_Shut up, bitch._

"Chikan…"

_Molester._

"Who cares, it wasn't you."

There was the sound of slapping.

And silence.

"I'm leaving. Now. And you can't stop me."

And there was shuffling, and cooing, and the slamming of a door. The sound of knocking on his door, knocking he ignored a few moments before opening it and staring into the face of a placid but angry Orochimaru.

"Sasuke," the man purred. It was only his name, and Sasuke knew that was all that needed to be said. He slammed the door shut and leaned against it.

And then there was further silence. Sasuke shut his eyes tightly. He knew that on some level, he would never see Kimimaro again, that this was the end of him. Not Tayuya though.

That wasn't goodbye.

* * *

Sasuke opened one eye. The thatched roof stretched over his head and beside him, a blond teenager lay sleeping.

He rolled over to re-establish his space. He felt nervous, claustrophobic. Dreaming again…he felt like he was always dreaming. It was just another dream. It was his way of reliving the past and he supposed it was better than having dreams about being tied up and beaten. He had had dreams like that before. He had mentioned them in passing, to Tayuya, and she had run her long fingers through her choppy pink hair and then through his black hair, and the rubbed her fingers together. Sasuke hadn't asked her what she was doing and she hadn't told him. She had explained to him he was probably suffering trauma from another one of Orochimaru's attacks, psychological or physical was irrelevant.

She told him it wasn't his fault.

He had been afraid to go to sleep from two days. Tayuya had thrown Kin out of her room and told Sasuke to take her bed. Kin hadn't put up a fuss: at that time, Tayuya had been sixteen to her twelve. Kin had merely run off to sleep in Juugo's room.

"Sleep," Tayuya had ordered, pointing at Kin's bed. "Don't wake up." She had run her fingers through his hair again and let him sleep across the room for her. She was the closest thing he had to a sister, no matter what his social worker told him after he explained the carefully prescribed story to explain the bruises.

Sasuke sat up and held his head in his hands. He felt another headache coming on. He hadn't had one like this since Tayuya had left. '_Why am I suddenly thinking about her so much?_' It had been almost a year. Orochimaru had adopted someone new in that time, a little girl named Isarabi.

He felt sorry for her. By the time he got back (he held out hope that they would get back, unlike Neji, who had just given up), would she too be covered with bruises.

"You're awake?"

Sasuke jumped. "Oh…yeah."

Naruto cocked his head to one side. "It's really early…five thirty six in the morning." He held out his watch. "Waterproof."

Sasuke nodded.

"Are you okay?"

Sasuke sighed, leaning back to lie on the floor. "I have no idea."

Naruto crawled to lay beside him. "No?"

Sasuke rolled onto his side. He faced the younger boy and it was just _too damned close_.

He shut his eyes. "No."

* * *

**O.o**

WhereTF (of WTF fame) did that come from? 


	18. Mood: Psychologically Confusing

**Rawr Chas got dumped. Hence, the beginnings of SasuNaru! (I've decided this is going to run 60 chapters. Assuming I don't get bored/have people tell me to STFU.) 7 inches of snow today though. Hoping for snow day. **

**I don't own. Not Naruto, not the beer song. I own everything else though (next to nothing. The-song-that's-not-the-beer-song).**

* * *

"Five thirty seven in the morning."

"Don't you have something better to do? I mean, besides reading off the time and being a complete and utter moron," Sasuke huffed in annoyance. Stupid insomnia had been keeping him awake a long time and now, even if he was really fucking tired, he couldn't sleep because Naruto was awake and, as such, going to sleep would make him slightly less manly than Naruto. That?

That was not going to happen.

"I know! I'll wake up Sai and tell him you're cold without him. I'm sure that'll do nicely. You two get along do well." Naruto grinned, wrinkling his nose in complete amusement at himself. "Aw, why so pouty, Sasuke? You don't like Sai?"

"I don't like anyone. Especially," this was accompanied by a nearly-feral growl, "you."

"Oh, Sasu, I'm hurt." Naruto covered his heart with one perfectly formed hand.

"Don't call me that." Sasuke narrowed his eyes. "You're awake…in the middle of the night. Don't you have something useful to do? You know, like go to sleep or something?"

"Maybe. Maybe not. You know me."

"No, really, I don't."

"Very true. I want to go out and grab a bite to eat. Neji is surprisingly predictable when it comes to devising rationing systems. We just need to eat stuff in multiples of seven or forty-three." Naruto rubbed the back of his neck a little nervously. "You want to come?"

"With you?" Sasuke raised an eyebrow. "I think I'd rather take my chances with penis-boy."

Naruto rolled his eyes. "Did you miss the whole 'multiples of forty three' part? Have you ever tried to eat forty three of anything larger than a baseball in one sitting? It's not so much fun for your stomach." The blond nodded sagely.

No, as a matter of fact, Sasuke hadn't. In fact, he rarely ate much of anything, but that was because Sasuke never had any desire to prove his worth by consuming large amounts of food and beverages. He had never entered any of the uber-competitive eating contests that seemed to spring up in Orochimaru's household. He remembered one particularly clearly: Tayuya had started it up with Juugo after a particularly brutal attack on her clothing of choice.

She had beaten him within an inch of his pie-fearing life.

Sasuke had never seen a teenaged girl put away eighteen cherry turn-overs in one fell swoop. It had been like watching…watching something else all together. Juugo had given up after eleven and merely stopped to watch the pink-haired punk shovel the pastries into her mouth, consuming with all of her might Which there was a lot of, by the way.

"No."

"No, no eating contests for Sasuke?" Naruto grinned, wrinkling his nose. "Come on, we're going for foods. We like foods, don't we?" He crawled around Sai and out of the driftwood structure. It was actually pretty sturdy, for a file of logs strung together with utter shit, complete devotion, and total fear-of-Temari. It was weird because usually stuff like that collapsed. Only one of the structures had collapsed, and that one had practically been rebuilt in an hour.

Had Sasuke cared, he would have wondered how that worked.

But he didn't care.

The two boys sat there, eating in the darkness. Neji would be pissed, probably, but they didn't have to worry about that. Sasuke always worried. Always, always worrying. It made him nervous and he chewed at his lips, indecisive at whether to speak or not.

Naruto ate another mango. He cut the skin off with a pocket knife that technically shouldn't have been on the plane but had somehow managed to get on anyway, handing it to Sasuke. Sasuke took the fruit gingerly and bit into the pulpy mass of gold. Juice dribbled down his face and pooled in the dip of his clavicle. The sandy dirt under his hands was gritty, uncomfortable, and he wanted to shift and move.

But he didn't.

"Are you okay?" Naruto's voice came out breathy, soft from secrecy and nighttime. "You look tense." It sounded like a bad pick-up line, only it was too sincere, too awkward to mean anything beside genuine concern.

Sasuke shook his head. "No."

"Oh."

They fell into silence again. Sasuke felt tired, weak and strange. He wanted to go home, make this over. He wanted food, any food that came in plastic besides peanuts. He didn't miss Orochimaru or Kin or Kabuto but he missed the mainland a lot. School would have started up, but that didn't matter anyway.

"So why were you awake at five thirty?" Naruto asked absently.

"Why were you?" Turn the conversation back on someone else…anyone else…just don't say anything that might bring it back to you.

"Oh, couldn't sleep. Just got to thinking about life and all that jazz. So? Why were you awake?"

This was a failing tactic. One must abandon failing things: relationships and planes, ships and tests. "What were you thinking about?"

"Fine. Don't answer me. I know you're avoiding the question. Only, I'm failing psych so I'm sure I can't get you to admit what's going on. No one gets up this early without reason…me, I was lonely and shit. Happens, you know? Now you…you're just afraid to admit what you're thinking and that's okay. Hiding weakness--"

"My foster family."

"What?"

"I was thinking about my foster family. Or parts of it. Slices of life." Sasuke drew his knees to his chest and hung his head. "What makes us who we are." He wouldn't admit he was worried about the girl now under Orochimaru's care. He wouldn't admit it because not only would that expose him as the brooding teenager he was, that would show a part of his life he didn't want anyone to notice, to mock him for being unable to handle. He had vowed not to tell anyone...especially not this loud, obnoxious teenager with the beautiful hands.

"So who's Leila?"

"What?" Sasuke's head jerked up. "How do you know about Leila?"

"You walk to yourself," Naruto explained. "Friend of yours?"

Sasuke shrugged. "Lived on my street when I was a kid. Moved a while ago. She was my…" he trailed off, "first friend." Another deep breath. He wasn't hiding weakness, he didn't have any, and he would prove it to this blond idiot one way or another. Having friends who moved away was perfectly acceptable.

"I see." Naruto tapped his lower lip thoughtfully. Sasuke watched the younger boy's hands. They were pretty, he decided. No problem with admiring someone's hands, or eyes, or mouth. Sasuke was meticulous, obsessive, about beauty. He had always been. There had been spans of weeks, months, when he survived on almost no food. Someone had told him it was an eating disorder, that it was weak, that he needed help to stop.

He hadn't.

Naruto's hands were beautiful with solid brown fingers that looked like that should be used for playing the guitar. Sasuke had a pianist's fingers. He had always had pianist fingers, and his parents must have noticed that because before they died, his parents had made him practice at that infernal instrument for hours and hours and hours on end, only to make him do it again the following day.

"Do you play the guitar?" Sasuke demanded. He couldn't sound like he cared because honestly, he didn't. Not really.

Naruto shrugged. "Mostly the drums, but I can play that too. Kiba and I are in a band with this senior named Elyse. She has these fucking amazing pipes and we're pretty damn rad, if you ask me." No one did.

"Oh." Sasuke bit his lip. Why had he asked that? Why did he care?

He didn't, remember?

"What makes you ask?"

"Your hands," Sasuke blurted. This was stupid. He was only talking to prove he had something to say, that he wasn't afraid and boring and weak-willed and cowardly. If that was right though, why did he suddenly feel so nervous?

He supposed that's what he got for bearing his soul.

"Oh." Naruto glanced down. "Do my hands look like guitarist hands?" He examined them, flicking dirt from beneath the growing fingernails. His hands, Sasuke decided, were the best part of the blond boy. He was too loud, obnoxious and shrieking. He had a grating voice that would have butchered Chinese really badly because of all the tones, and his intellect was just the tiniest bit off kilter, but his hands…

His hands were nice.

Sasuke shook his head. "No…"

"No they don't?" Naruto cocked his head to one side.

"Yes they do," Sasuke snapped.

"Does the illustrious Uchiha actually talk to himself?"

"Shut up," Sasuke snapped. He was not friends with this boy, but he could think he had nice hands. This was totally normal. Totally and completely normal.

"Ah, more pent up weakness…overcompensating for much?"

"I think your hands are pretty."

This was met with a very long silence.

"You didn't really fail psych, did you?"

* * *

"Oh, what Oh... what is the malt and liquor? What gets you drunken quicker? What comes in bottles or in cans?" 

"BEER!"

"Can't get enough of it! How we really love it! Makes me think I'm a man!"

"I could kiss and hug it! But I'd rather chug it! Got my belly up to here! I could not refuse a beer!"

"I could really use a beer--"

"Beer--"

"Beer!"

Neji rubbed his temples. "Will you two shut up? You've only sung that song all the way through, what, fifteen times?" Temari, Kiba and Neji were sitting in the main clearing in a semi-circle, rationing out food. Some of it had disappeared and Neji, in his paranoia, was beginning to suspect some form of sabotage from the animal inhabitants of the island. Probably part of Lee's massive legion of angry reptiles hell-bent on attempting to destroy the very structure of the island's fragile community.

"Eighteen!" Temari shrieked. "Why are you in charge of inventory if you can't goddamned count?" She glowered at the pale, sun-burning boy in front of her. "I happen to like beer, as does the lovely Kiba here." She yanked Kiba against her hip, "and we are magic like that, fo shizzle."

Neji blinked. "Fo…shiz…you know what? I don't want to know."

"Get fucked, Hyuuga," Temari muttered. "Oh…I can't remember how much I have had, I drank a twelve pack with, my dad!"

"This is my son, the drunk and manly stud…I'm proud to be his bud!"

Neji winced. "Stop! Stop!" He chucked a rock at Temari's lap. She chucked it back at his head. He dodged and then glowered at her, dusting off the top of his hair. "Shut up! Sing a different song! Any different song! Doesn't matter what it is."

Kiba and Temari looked at each other for a long moment.

And so began the great Singing-In-Unison. "Imagine imagine the chill'uns all gather, into the darkness or out of you'd rather…oh there are many a chill'un from many a town, hair colors ranging from neon to brown, but if there are these chill'uns and they lack the right smarts, then what does it matter if they're lacking the hearts--"

"Shut up shut up shut up!" Neji regretted his 'sing anything' order. This song sounded like it could continue on for a long time. Like, 'until they got rescued' long time.

"Oh, reference to the great son from above, except that these chill'un couldn't feel love, trapped in the pixel-bred land of their clan--"

"Be…quiet…"

"Only one girl, but she was a man--"

"This…is…illogical!"

"Electric and shmazing, Twelve was quite fierce--"

"With fingers all bloody and eyes that could pierce, she ran off from the dark with Eleven and Eight--"

"The latter who killed the girl not out of hate--" Temari twirled her hair in circles.

"But instead to gain power, to search for himself--"

At this point, Gaara walked into the clearing. He blinked. "You," he said, pointing at Temari. "Silence thyself. You are frightening enough without the added bonus of ballads." He pointed at Kiba with one pale, quivering, accusatory finger. "And you…you are a tone deaf freak. Be quiet."

Silence commenced in the small clearing. In the distance, a mango fell off a tree and landed on the sand with a splat.

"Good." He gestured to Temari and Kiba. "Second most annoying song on the planet."

Neji blinked. "How come they'll shut up for you but not for me?"

"Because you don't know the words to the first most annoying song on the planet."

* * *

**Rarw, pointless Temari/Kiba singing. The first song is Weird Al Yankovic's 'The Beer Song'. Some form of author-magic compensation if you can tell me what the Second Most Annoying Song on the Planet is about. (Hint: Not necessarily Naruto-based. Japanese-media based, but not necessarily Naruto based.) **


	19. Mood: Chatspeaking and Conflictual

**You know what happened to my updating?**

**We call them finals.**

**I had a lit final, a bio final, a geometry final, a photography final, two (count 'em!) two Japanese finals for two different Japanese classes, and a geography final. Had to label all the countries in Africa.**

**There are sixty three.**

** At least there had better be, or I'm screwed. **

**I disclaim.**

* * *

Sasuke awoke feeling sluggish. He was still sick and he hated being stick. He blamed mosquitoes. 

More specifically, female mosquitoes.

Sasuke lay back down on the floor of the hut-yurt-shelter and shut his eyes. _'Maybe,_' he thought dully, '_I can play dead and they'll leave me alone._'

No such luck. "Up and at 'em!" Naruto bubbled, poking Sasuke in the back. "Are you okay?" The blond boy sat down and cocked his head far to one side. "Are you being all angst ridden again?"

"I have fucking Malaria," Sasuke growled. "Leave me alone." If only it was just the angst. His head hurt…sort of…he felt almost disoriented. Maybe? He didn't know. It was also very possible that he was still just…rabbit…

Naruto poked Sasuke again, bringing the black haired boy out of his stupor. He really needed to get out more. "Stop doing that," she snapped, sitting up. Only the slightest bit dizzy, but otherwise pretty much okay. "Okay, what's on the blonde bitch's agenda for the day?"

"I told her you and I were going to cut mangoes into strips and leave them out to dry, but I can do that myself. You just have to get up and come with me. You can sleep or something. I don't know. Temari's all PMS-ing and shit. Actually…"

Naruto paused.

"All the girls are PMS-ing. Which is why we're going out mango hunting and not Ino."

Losing half the workforce sounded bad for small island communities. Especially when the small island communities are basically run by a woman. That would explain the sudden anarchy that had sort of sprung up everywhere.

For instance, Gaara and Neji were nowhere to be found, and neither was Kiba.

Then again, Kiba spent most of his waking hours either eating, thinking about eating, or thinking about women. And since the first and last were out, it was very likely he was pawing at the door, attempting to get into the food shack.

This would, undoubtedly, fail.

Sasuke dozed off in the shade of the palm tree. Ages…it had been ages since he had actually napped in the shade of a palm tree. Also, it was very possible it had been a day or so, but time was less relevant now. Long ago, he had run everything by the clock: awake at six thirty, out of the house by seven. All of the classes were run on a minute-by-minute schedule. First period ended at 9: 17, second period began at 9: 22. Always, always the same, no matter what.

In retrospect, Sasuke found the whole experience rather trying.

"Here," he found a yellow object whizzing towards his head a second later. Unconsciously, he caught it. A mango? "Just peel off the skin. It's good and it'll keep you from getting heat stroke. Heat stroke plus Malaria equals some serious bitch-plz."

"So I've heard." Sasuke struggled to yank the skin off the mango. "How the hell…stupid…"

"Let me see it," Naruto ordered. Sasuke dejectedly passed the fruit to the blond boy, who rubbed it between his palms and split the skin open with his nails before handing it back to the dark haired boy. Sasuke blinked at the dripping fruit in his hands.

"How come you can do that and I can't?"

"Because," Naruto said simply. "I have mad amazing skills." He held out a hand to show off his one long mango-ripping nail. "BTW--"

"BTW?"

"By the way." Naruto shrugged. "It's faster to say. However, you look like someone accidentally-on-purpose sodomized you with a rainbow umbrella. Does chat speak insult your sense of self?"

Sasuke glowered. "No."

"Okay,_by the way,_ how are your hands doing? Mine are completely healed." Naruto held out his palms to expose nothing but slightly scarred skin, and even that would fade once it tanned over. Sasuke showed his hands off reluctantly. They were still a little scabby.

Naruto began to poke at Sasuke's fingers. "They look pretty much okay," he said. "You heal really slow."

Sasuke didn't have a reply. Didn't need a reply. The less talking the better. They would be rescued soon, he figured. Being rescued soon would be a rather pleasant experience. He had email to check and stuff like that.

And school to work on.

And a million other things to do.

He couldn't afford to miss any more school. Various 'sports related injuries', the ever-so-common 'my little sister accidentally nailed me with a baseball head wounds', and the eternal 'ran into a door ouchies' (how could anyone still believe that?) kept him out of class more than they should have. He could usually get away with claiming that it was for some sort of college program…fooled his peers (friends? What friends?) anyway. His teachers would be pacified by notes from guardians and various made up homework assignments.

Any more school though, and he would be really behind. He had already missed two weeks of school, plus all of spring break.

Sasuke snatched his hand back and set about attempting to eat the mango as neatly as possible. This is hard to do even armed with a spoon and a napkin. When the mango is cut. And hasn't been rolled between a pair of un-sweaty palms.

"You look stupid," Naruto said. Sasuke glowered again. One might wonder if his face would one day stick in a perpetual scowl. Naruto wouldn't put it past the universe to be that cruel. It was a lot like that.

Maybe not so cruel though…Sasuke was pretty much gifted with looks and that was about it. He lacked social skills and a code of behavior that let him fit in with others. He lacked Naruto's enthusiasm, Kiba's good-natured-ness, Sai's intrinsic creativity, Temari's powerful attitude.

He had nothing going for him.

This induced pity in Naruto. He wasn't sure why even…Sasuke had never been kind to him. They had gone to the same school for ages but never actually known each other. It was sort of weird, too, since Naruto talked to everybody. He didn't think there was anyone he didn't get along with, besides Sasuke's foster brother Kabuto.

But nobody really liked him.

"Hey, Sasuke," Naruto sat down beside the dark haired boy and lay back against the sand, "what're you thinking about?"

Sasuke paused. "Home," he drawled after a second. That was half a lie. He had been thinking about home, true, but not home-as-in-the-mainland, home as in I'm-six-and-happy. His mind had only drifted for a second and then there it was, a question on his thoughts. Karmic, almost. He'd have to be a little more careful.

"Oh." Naruto's response was painfully clipped. "Bet you can't wait to go back, huh?" He grinned.

Sasuke shrugged. "I need to get back to school. I don't want to fall behind."

Naruto laughed shortly. "Oh please. You? Fall behind? You're like, the most together person I've ever met. You've always got everything in on time and you're never late or absent, unless you're working on those college program things."

This earned a short, dry laugh from Sasuke. "Whatever moron."

"What?" Naruto looked affronted. "I just tried to be nice to you, Uchiha, and you go and decide you don't want people to be friendly? Well guess what? You have to help then." Met with a blank stare, Naruto pointed. "Mangoes. Climb the trees to get them."

"I thought you said--"

"Changed my mind."

Sasuke got to his feet and stood, scowling at Naruto. Naruto stared at him with a sort of amused look on his face. "What?"

"You're stupid."

"You're stupid too."

"You're stupider."

"Is that even a word?"

"Of course it's a word, I said it, didn't I?"

"Be quiet."

"I believe the term you seek is 'STFU n00b'."

* * *

"The last battery has died." 

"Indeed."

"I blame Temari and Kiba's singing."

"I blame Kiba's singing because Kiba won't bite off my head if I piss him off."

"Indeed."

"What now?"

Kiba, Sai, and Shikamaru leaned back on the sand. "I'm bored," Shikamaru drawled. "This is starting to be really boring. Honestly: no book, no paper, no music." Nearby, Neji and Gaara had taken to sitting and watching absolutely nothing. Because honestly, they were bored. Or rather, Neji was bored and Gaara was embracing his inner slasher-film-screenwriter. His name was Antonio. He is rather fond of mushrooms.

Kiba nodded. "I agree…how the hell did people survive before MP3 players?"

"They drew on cave walls," Sai muttered bitterly. "Only there are no cave walls."

"So there aren't."

The three boys looked up and got an eye full of Ino. "What do you need?" Shikamaru asked before the others could, always a bit more tactful. "Is something the matter?"

Ino shook her head and sat down. "No, just bored."

"I see."

"I don't."

"Ah, honesty. Good man." Ino ran her fingers through her hair. "Wow, so nice to be near people who aren't screaming." She leaned back on her elbows. "Well, Hinata isn't yelling at anyone, but everyone else is. Even though that's really only Sakura and Temari."

"Isn't that everyone else?"

"Pretty much."  
"I don't know what we're going to do now."

"We could play truth or dare," Kiba suggested.

Ino rolled her eyes. "What are we, middle schoolers? Let's play spin the bottle too! It'll be such fun!" She blinked her eyes lashes as if swooning. "Yes, of course that's how I want to spend my afternoon of 'rest and relaxation'."

"I'm siding with Ino on this one," Shikamaru muttered. "I would rather poke Temari with a stick."

"You has ten foot pole?" Sai scratched his head. "Or you has invincibility potion."

"Indeed."

Sai nodded. "I see where you're coming from, Lazy One." He shrugged his shoulders. Shikamaru just snorted. "BTW, I so wish I had some paper and a damned pen. The lines in the forest are really great. Perfect structure…"

"I want a book," Shikamaru growled under his breath. "I don't have one."

"Thanks for stating the obvious," Ino snapped. "Clearly, I do not have a hair dryer."

"Or concealer." Neji.

Kiba snorted. "I miss my dog."

"You know what? No one cares! I have a zit the size of Equatorial Guinea on my nose!" This was Neji again.

"Well I have cramps that cause Earthquakes in Sudan!"

At this point, Sai muttered a quick 'BBL' and scurried away as fast as he could. It could get messy. Or traumatizing. Or some combination there of.

"Well, Equatorial Guinea was Spanish!"

"Well Sudan is amazing."

"Oh yeah, with all those human rights…"

"You know what? Shut up."

"At least I donate to help save Darfur!"

Kiba sighed mournfully. "My dog is going to be so pissed…"

"You want to babble about human rights, what about abortion laws? You think no one sees those bumper stickers, but we do! WE SEE THE BUMPER STICKERS NEJI!"

"So you support the--"

"No, I support women's right--"

"Which makes you a--"

"Like you know anything, you're never going to have to--"

"Hey look," Kiba tapped Shikamaru on the shoulder and pointed. "Neji is about to be pwned by Ino's angry PMS-ing female skills." The two boys glanced at each other and scooted back simultaneously. It was a giant wave of hostility radiating off the blond girl. Things bubbled. Animals died. Lee and his reptile horde ran away.

They tuned it out, the lot of them, that stream of words. Lot's of huge words, like 'bodily domain', and 'ad hominem', and lots of small words, like 'the' and 'are'. Oh, and lot's of shrieking. And logic. And Neji looking sort of freaked out. Him leaving, Ino stomping away, a couple of raised eyebrows and then…

"Exit, pursued by a maniac with a chain saw."

Tarantino.

* * *

**Neji strikes me as an avid pro-lifer. And I think after a certain point, chatspeak would commence (since I don't write using chatspeak, but I do speak it with my friends, right down to "STUFF-OO NOOB").**

**I should have done my homework instead. It involves lots of writing. Well, actually, just three paragraphs, maybe ten sentences total. But that's going to take a really long time. Why?**

**Let's just say I get extra credit if I use kanji ::fails at Na-Adjectives::**

**Japanese can be a bitch. **

**Wish me luck.**


End file.
